Alternative Comics: an Emerging Literature

Home , Adult comics, Alternative comics, Autobiographical comics, Bijou Funnies, Bill Spicer, Black Eye Productions

Charles Hatfield

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI • JACKSON www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

First edition 2005 ϱ

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hatfield, Charles, 1965– Alternative comics : an emerging literature / Charles Hatfield. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57806-718-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-57806-719-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Underground comic books, strips, etc.—United States—History and criticism. I. Title. PN6725.H39 2005 741.5'0973—dc22 2004025709

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction ix Alternative Comics as an Emerging Literature

1 Comix, Comic Shops, and the Rise of 3 Alternative Comics, Post 1968

2 An Art of Tensions 32 The Otherness of Comics Reading

3 A Broader Canvas: Gilbert Hernandez’s Heartbreak Soup 68

4 “I made that whole thing up!” 108 The Problem of Authenticity in Autobiographical Comics

5 Irony and Self-Reflexivity in Autobiographical Comics 128 Two Case Studies

6 Whither the Graphic Novel? 152

Notes 164

Works Cited 169

Index 177 This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Who can do this sort of thing alone? Not I. Thanks are due to many. For permission to include passages from my article, “Heartbreak Soup: The Interdependence of Theme and Form” (Inks 4:2, May 1997), the Ohio State University Press. For shepherding that article in the first place, Inks editor Lucy Shelton Caswell. For the use of copyrighted material, the many artists and other rights- holders represented herein. Special thanks to the following, without whom my vague aspirations and tentative arguments could not have become a book: For guiding my first draft, my advisors at the University of Connecticut: Tom Roberts, Jean Marsden, and Tom Recchio. For information and images: Robert Beerbohm, Cécile Danehy, Gary Groth, John Morrow, Mark Nevins, Nhu-Hoa Nguyen, Nick Nguyen, Eric Reynolds, Michael Rhode, Patrick Rosenkranz, Randall Scott, R. Sikoryak, Tim Stroup, Brian Tucker, and the Comics Scholars’ Discussion List ([email protected]). For the correspondence, Gilbert Hernandez. For patience and counsel, Seetha Srinivasan and Walter Biggins. For design, Pete Halverson. For mentorship and friendship, Joseph (Rusty) Witek. For help of all sorts and friendship in all weathers, my fellow traveler Gene Kannenberg, Jr. For inspiration and conversation, my brother Scott. For unstinting moral and material support, my parents Ella and Jerry and my parents-in-law Ann and Bob. For the spark, Jack Kirby. Finally, and above all, to my own dear family: Michele, Coleman, and Nicholas. Norp!

vii This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION

ALTERNATIVE COMICS AS AN EMERGING LITERATURE

This book is about comics. Specifically, it is about the growth, over the past thirty- odd years, of the American-style comic book and its loosely named offshoot, the graphic novel. In the English-reading world, the graphic novel in particular has become comics’ passport to recognition as a form of literature. Through this book I aim to cast light on both the necessary preconditions for and certain key examples of this newly recognized literature, while unashamedly holding up as a backdrop the form’s populist, industrial, and frankly mercenary origins. In all, this book offers an entry—or rather several points of entry, including the sociohistorical and the aesthetic—into that most fertile and bewildering sector of comic book culture, alternative comics. Alternative comics trace their origins to the underground “comix” movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which, jolted to life by the larger social upheavals of the era, departed from the familiar, anodyne conventions of the commercial comics mainstream and provided the initial impetus, the spark of possibility, for a new model of comics creation. The countercultural comix movement—scurrilous, wild and liberating, innovative, radical, and yet in some ways narrowly circumscribed—gave rise to the idea of comics as an acutely personal means of artistic exploration and self-expression. The aesthetic and economic example of the underground (as related in this book’s scene-setting first chapter) spurred the development of what eventually became a highly specialized commercial venue for comics: the comic book specialty shop, as it blossomed in the seventies and eighties. Within this specialized environment, the collision of “underground” distribution with mainstream comic book publishing resulted in the growth of a hermetic yet economically advantageous market, one that catered to mainstream comic book fans but sustained, at its margins, the fevered sense of artistic possibility ignited by comix.

ix INTRODUCTION

“Alternative” comics, responding to that spirit, personal and at times boldly political themes. What’s sprang up within the specialty market during the more, alternative comics invited a new formalism, that 1970s, and more vitally and self-consciously from the is, an intensive reexamining of the formal tensions early 1980s onward, with the advent of iconoclastic inherent in comics (which are the focus of chapter 2). magazines such as Raw (1980–91) and Weirdo Indeed among the best of alternative comics are (1981–93), both rooted in underground comix, and many that have expanded the formal possibilities of Love & Rockets (1981–), deeply indebted to both comic art: out of a struggle with the conventions of underground and mainstream comics. These publi- serial publication, they have created breathtaking cations participated in a burgeoning movement of experiments in narrative structure and density. One so-called independent comics, but stood out even such experiment, Gilbert Hernandez’s recently col- within that context because of the animating influ- lected Central American epic Heartbreak Soup, is the ence of the undergrounds, which inspired them to flout subject of chapter 3. Unfolding on a vast social and the traditional comic book’s overwhelming emphasis temporal canvas, Heartbreak Soup tested the limits on comforting formula fiction. Even as the growing of comics form in order to broaden the artistic hori- sophistication of mainstream genre comics led to revi- zons and question the political responsibilities of sions of familiar formulas—leading, for instance, to comic books. a boom in darkly revisionist superheroes in the late Alternative comics, in addition, have enlarged the eighties—alternative comics skirted those shopworn comic book’s thematic repertoire by urging the explo- genres. They were the boot up the backside of comic ration of genres heretofore neglected in comics, such books, pushing and kicking against the calcified limi- as autobiography, reportage, and historical fiction. tations of the medium. Autobiography, especially, has been central to alter- Though driven by the example of underground native comics—whether in picaresque shaggy-dog comix, many alternative comics cultivated a more con- stories or in disarmingly, sometimes harrowingly, sidered approach to the art form, less dependent on frank uprootings of the psyche—and this has raised the outrageous gouging of taboos (though that con- knotty questions about truth and fictiveness, realism tinued too, of course) and more open to the possibility and fantasy, and the relationship between author and of extended and ambitious narratives. Alternative audience. These topics are essayed in chapters 4 comic creators of various pedigrees—from venera- and 5, which turn on the question of artistic self- ble comic book pioneer Will Eisner (1917–2005), to representation, arguing that self-reflexive and mock- underground veteran Art Spiegelman, to underground autobiographical devices paradoxically serve to latecomer Harvey Pekar, to such newcomers as Gilbert reinforce autobiography’s claims to truth. Chapter 5 and Jaime Hernandez—raised the intoxicating possibil- further argues that self-reflexive autobiographical ity that comics might be viewed not only as a crack- comics, far from devolving into navel-gazing passiv- ling, vital repository of supercharged Pop Art but also, ity, can become, indeed have become, a means for and crucially, as a literary form. radical cultural argument. From this reenvisioning of comics has sprung a vital In sum, this book shows how alternative comics if underappreciated literary movement—and it is to have breached the limits of the traditional comic this movement that the following book is devoted. book on every level, including packaging, publica- Crucial to this new movement were the rejection of tion, narrative form and thematic content. In the mainstream formulas; the exploration of (to comics) process they have spawned the vital yet often misun- new genres, as well as the revival, at times ironic derstood genre of the “graphic novel,” whose origins recasting, of genres long neglected; a diversification are addressed in chapter 1 (and whose constraints are of graphic style; a budding internationalism, as car- addressed, finally, in chapter 6). This genre, again, toonists learned from other cultures and other tradi- has become a passport to new recognition; indeed tions; and, especially, the exploration of searchingly the graphic novel has been repeatedly invoked as a x INTRODUCTION radically “new” form, even the harbinger of a new curricula and pedagogically minded cartoonists. For visual literacy. Such claims, of course, mislead: example, the National Association of Comics Art Edu- graphic novels are neither “post-literary” nor without cators, founded by James Sturm in 2002, advocates precedent. They are comics, thus examples of a ven- the development of comics programs in educational erable tradition. Yet the graphic novel genre is of institutions; it represents a summing up of recent gains recent coinage, and its commercial upsurge even and a hopeful next step after Eisner and McCloud. more recent; moreover, its recognition has invigor- (Much to the enrichment of the field, NACAE has ated the critical discourse about comics. At last encouraged the exchange of teaching materials comics are being recognized as a literary and artistic between studio art and non-studio instructors, for form deserving of sustained attention. example, teachers of literature and media studies.) The recent influx of artistically ambitious graphic In short, comics are clearly in the process of being novels has led to salutary changes in the critical envi- repositioned within our culture. This is not because ronment—a trend borne out in rigorous academic all comics are changing (such is never the case) but study as well as greater attention from reviewers. For because some comics have stimulated profound telling academic evidence of this trend, consider, for changes in the ways the form is received and under- example, two articles in the Chronicle of Higher stood. At the forefront of this development are alterna- Education that appeared, bookend-like, to bracket tive comics. In particular, Art Spiegelman’s two-volume my final round of work on this volume: The first, by family memoir Maus, recipient of a special Pulitzer in cartoonist and art instructor James Sturm, appeared 1992, constituted a signal moment in the emergence in the April 25, 2002, issue and urged art schools and of book-length comics from obscurity—a major inter- art departments to take up the teaching of comics as vention in the history of the form and its attendant a discipline. The second, by historian Paul Buhle, criticism. Spiegelman’s achievement, unprecedented appeared in the May 16, 2003, issue and noted, in English-language comics, served to ratify comic art albeit in an underresearched way, the recent growth as a literary form; the reception of Maus suddenly of comics study as an academic field. (Unfortunately, made serious comics culturally legible, recognizable, Buhle failed to mention the rise of academic confer- in a way they had not been before. Yet Spiegelman’s ences and publications devoted to comics study, the success only crystallized a larger trend of which he had interdisciplinary nature of the field, or its mushroom- been a part: the development of a new breed of car- ing diversity—full acknowledgment of which would toonists and comics writers, for whom comics were have drawn a drastically different picture of the field.) first and above all an acutely personal means of literary This recent growth in comics study is reflected in, expression. This revolution in reception and practice, and has been much affected by, the increasing self- solidified by Maus, is what is meant by alternative awareness of practitioners, which has resulted in such comics—and it has publicly redefined the potential of seminal works of autocriticism as Will Eisner’s text- the art form. book Comics & Sequential Art (1985) and Scott McCloud’s much-debated theoretical comic Under- standing Comics (1993). Both of these books, but THE DEVILS OF STATUS AND DISTINCTION especially McCloud, have had a strong impact on artistic practice and academic research (see, for exam- Some will nonetheless scoff at the labeling of comics ple, Witek, Inks, and Beaty, “Critical Focus”—and this as “literature”—and among the scoffers will be some book, frankly, for McCloud’s work sparked my own, practitioners. Alternative comics, coming as they do or at least rerouted it). These watershed studies have out of a marginalized subculture, uneasily straddle changed the way the field talks about itself and have two different attitudes about comic art: one, that the given rise to a new, or newly self-conscious, breed of form is at its best an underground art, teasing and comics formalism, as well as a wave of sequential art outraging bourgeois society from a gutter-level

xi INTRODUCTION position of economic hopelessness and (paradoxically) attacking a peculiar consensus of leftist reformers and unchecked artistic freedom; two, that the form needs rightist censors who had in common but one thing: and deserves cultural legitimatization as a means of a hatred and dread of the lowbrow comic book. artistic expression. (That would include academic Fiedler’s defense of comic books proved prescient, in legitimization.) Alternative comics waver between that it effectively prophesied the odd meeting of low- these two positions—between the punk and the cura- brow form and highbrow attitude that was to occur in tor, so to speak. the underground comix of the 1960s, and especially Both of these attitudes have their attendant dan- in the alternative comics of the 1980s and after. gers. The former, at its worst, reeks of willed naiveté Though the subculture of alternative comics is low- or reverse snobbery. The latter, at its worst, reeks of brow and shabby in origin, it tends to be highbrow status anxiety and an over-earnest bidding for gentri- both in its material obsessions and in its self-conscious fication. Either position may be blinding, but together rejection of bourgeois norms. these contrary attitudes form the inescapable setting Because critical discussions of comic art in America for any discussion of comic books as literature—so in remain stubbornly connected to such ideas about what follows we will not be able to ignore them class, both the prosecution and the defense have entirely. The contemporary comic book field, espe- always leaned heavily on the notion of comics as an cially in its alternative wing, embodies a curious mix of under-art or paraliterature, one that (to invoke Art values, a blend of countercultural iconoclasm, rapa- Spiegelman’s oft-quoted phrase) flies below critical cious consumerism, and learned connoisseurship. It is radar. Fiedler understood the inevitability of this in a highly specialized if thinly populated consumer cul- 1955, and the problem persists. For this reason, those ture, one that holds tightly to a romanticized position who seek to study comics as a literary form often find of marginality and yet courts wider recognition. Its themselves pulled between two impulses, neither of best authors have to navigate this swamp of conflict- which yields a wholly satisfactory outcome. ing values (both without and within). Scholars must On the one hand, status anxiety may drive scholars do the same. to import traditional literary standards to comics with- Suffice to say that this book cannot resolve the out respect for the comics’ unique origins and nature. lowbrow/highbrow conflict, nor does it seek to. As an example (one I can cite with impunity), my own Respectability, of course, can be stifling—some car- earliest writings on the subject favored nuts ’n’ bolts toonists think so—but marginality can likewise be suf- formalism, almost New Critical in character, as a self- focating. Ambivalence on this score is hard to avoid, conscious corrective to sweeping content analysis. I for, ever since the earliest published attacks on comic wanted formal rigor to displace sociological maxims books (that would be 1940), critical discussions of the about “popular culture”; I wanted readers to appreci- medium have always been implicitly tied to beliefs ate the complexities of the art form. To get to that about class. This tendency finally became explicit in promised land, though, I felt obliged to bypass some 1955 with Leslie Fiedler’s bravura essay, “The Middle of the more distracting elements of the comic book Against Both Ends,” in part an ironic defense of the landscape, including its industrial origins and its fervid medium: Fiedler famously claimed that comic books, emphasis on certain market genres (cue some remark as a lowbrow form, attracted the same sort of middle- about superheroes here). Such an approach allows brow scorn as did avant-garde or highbrow art; that one to appreciate the layered complexities and ironies both kinds of attack were grounded in the middle- of the most challenging comics but falsifies the comics brow’s “fear of difference” (428). In so saying, of reading experience in two ways: one, it soft-pedals course, he was joining a midcentury discussion of the essential role of popular genre comics in establish- taste framed by such critics as Clement Greenberg ing both a public taste and the scholar’s own passion and Dwight MacDonald, known for their Olympian for the form; and two, it does not allow one to recog- disdain of the middlebrow. He was, more specifically, nize the seminal achievements of popular comics xii INTRODUCTION creators from the past. (It ought to be as easy for crit- comics. Though many are wretched, and the subcul- ics to appreciate the work of a commercial cartoonist ture from which they spring is admittedly an ideologi- like Carl Barks or Jack Kirby as it is for them to admire cal rat’s nest, alternative comics have also been the the work of a filmmaker like Griffith or Ford.) Thus seedbed of much that is vital and transforming in the status anxiety can doubly handicap the critic’s work. comics field. I think readers of contemporary literature On the other hand, scholars may argue from an should be specially introduced to them. iconoclast’s position, and point out, with a nod of the head toward Pierre Bourdieu, that taste differentials are based not on inherent qualities in art so much as THE VIRTUES OF UNFIXABILITY on the exercise of political power by privileged classes. By this argument, it makes no sense, and indeed Both socially and aesthetically, comics are likely to would be bitterly ironic, to erect a comics “canon,” an remain an unresolved, unstable, and challenging form. authoritative consensus that would reproduce, within This is what makes them interesting. Indeed, for the the comics field, the same operations of exclusion and general reader, the collateral benefits of comics study domination that have for so long been brought to may be found in this very instability: if comic art is bear against the field as a whole. This iconoclast argu- some kind of bastard, to recruit a popular metaphor, ment questions the needfulness of making hierarchi- then maybe bastardy is just the thing—our culture has cal distinctions among comics (indeed, why even it in for aesthetic purity anyway. In our age of new and single out alternative comics as such?), and argues hybrid media, interartistic collaboration is king. Popular for a more open, less canon-obsessed view of the culture and high art alike are saturated with text/ field. Such a position is tempting, as it allows one to image combinations; we are encircled by imagetexts (a keep all of the field in focus, sans status anxiety, and phrase I lift from W. J. T. Mitchell). What better form to discuss the ceaseless interchange between popular than comics to tune up our sensibilities and alert us to genre works and more critically favored ones. That the possibilities of such texts? Among the popular tra- interchange is crucial: doubtless our sense of literary ditions, none mix text and image more persistently, or history would be richer had past scholars not lost sight diversely, than comics; they make an ideal laboratory of it, that is, had they not neglected the popular tradi- for the sustained study of text/image relations. In tions which stoked the development of what would my own teaching I have learned that bringing comics later become canonical literary works (Northanger into contact with other hybrid forms (for example, pic- Abbey, anyone?). Why should we repeat the same ture books, illustrated novels, artist’s books, concrete critical exclusions, the same mistakes, with comics? poems) enriches my and my students’ understanding Yet the iconoclast position, grounded though it is of text/image relations in general. in a necessary Marxist critique of taste, cannot explain Comics are challenging (and highly teachable) the bracing experience of reading and rereading because they offer a form of reading that resists excellent work in the comics form—work that not coherence, a form at once seductively visual and only engages us emotionally and intellectually with its radically fragmented. Comic art is a mixed form, and vision of life but also tutors us in the possibilities of the reading comics a tension-filled experience (as I form and makes us hunger to read more good work in posit in chapter 2). Recent criticism both within and that form. Simply put, a critical stance that posits no without the academy has recognized that comics meaningful distinctions among comics cannot do jus- solicit the reader’s participation in a unique way; tice to the art form. Nor can it explain its recent reju- through their very plurality of means, they advert to venation. That is why the following study, while that incompleteness or indeterminancy, which, as acknowledging the history of the comic book as a Wolfgang Iser has argued, urges readers to take up lowbrow or no-brow medium (and referencing comics the constitutive act of interpretation (The Act of of all kinds), finds its center of gravity in alternative Reading 166–70). The fractured surface of the

xiii INTRODUCTION comics page, with its patchwork of different images, hybrid texts. Indeed comics have the potential to shapes, and symbols, presents the reader with a sur- illuminate the entire field of word/image relation- feit of interpretive options, creating an experience ships. If, as W. J. T. Mitchell argues in Picture Theory that is always decentered, unstable, and unfixable. (5), all media are “mixed,” and all representations As Robert P. Fletcher observes, this fragmentation “heterogeneous,” then comics may serve as a way urges readers to take a critical role, for comic art of honing our critical sensibilities to approach the “calls attention to its fictionality by displaying its material and visual dimensions even of more tradi- narrative seams” (381). The reader’s responsibility tional texts. Through the exploration of comics we for negotiating meaning can never be forgotten, for can work on assembling a much-needed vocabulary the breakdown of comics into discrete visual quanta for the study of hybrid texts old and new, a vocabu- continually foregrounds the reader’s involvement. lary that will help us better understand the visual The very discontinuity of the page urges readers to elements of literature as well as the possibilities of do the work of inference, to negotiate over and over interartistic collaboration. Comic art, after all, repre- the passage from submissive reading to active inter- sents a vast experimenting with word/image combi- preting. In the words of McCloud’s Understanding nations, a thus far neglected inheritance that may Comics, “Every act committed to paper by the make it possible for us to reapproach whole bodies comics artist is aided and abetted by a silent accom- of marginalized work from the past (as well as the plice. An equal partner in crime known as the burgeoning possibilities of an increasingly on-line reader” (68, his emphasis). future). The comics form is infinitely plastic: there is no single recipe for reconciling the various elements of the comics page. Granted, readers are guided by WHAT (NOT) TO EXPECT expectations born of habit, and artists by “rules” born of long usage, but the makeup of the page While establishing a cultural milieu for alternative need not follow any set pattern. In the reading of comics, this study views comic art primarily as a liter- a page there is always the possibility that differ- ary form. This is not the only productive way comics ent protocols may be invoked, different elements can be viewed, but it is an important and thus far stressed. Perhaps that is why, within the larger field neglected way. Granted, comics are an unusual kind of word/image study, comics are a wandering vari- of literature and should not be carelessly subsumed able, and can be approached from so many perspec- into prevailing models (a caveat raised in chapter tives. The restless, polysemiotic character of the form 6). What’s more, comics study encourages eclecti- allows for the continual rewriting of its grammar; cism, for comics urge the dissolution of professional each succeeding page need not function in precisely boundaries and the mingling of theories and meth- the same manner as its predecessor. The relationship ods drawn from various fields. In this sense they between the various elements of comics (images, are antidisciplinary. Yet embarking on comics study words, symbols) resists easy formulation. The critical requires, no less than other fields, a provisional com- reading of comics therefore involves a tug-of-war mitment to some discipline, some particular way of between conflicting impulses: on the one hand, the seeing. (Otherwise, how can one get started?) In nigh-on irresistible urge to codify the workings of what follows, then, I have stressed the literary, while the form; on the other, a continual delight in the happily stretching out toward other fields and modes form’s ability to frustrate any airtight analytical of inquiry. At the core of this book is an interest in scheme. comics as a narrative form, in the broadest sense: fic- The inherent plurality of comic art makes it apt tion, recollection, reportage, exposition. These are for critical study, as it promises to shed light on not the only things to look for in comics—narrative verbal-visual dynamics in many different kinds of drive is not the only, nor always the best, criterion xiv INTRODUCTION for evaluating a comic—but I continue to be drawn open for reassessment, as many of the limiting to comics that tell stories. assumptions behind previous scholarship have at last I am, however, not drawn to arguments based on been overturned (no longer do we assume that presumptions about the “essence,” proper scope, or comics are American in origin, that they are just over limitations of comic art. (Such arguments are rou- one hundred years old, or that they are reducible to tinely flouted by alternative comics.) And, emphati- a handful of popular genres). In fact this is an exhila- cally, I am not interested in problems of definition or rating moment for comics study, for, aesthetically, origin, issues that have consumed much energy critically, and economically, things have changed and among comics scholars. Regarding the “origin” of are changing so fast that it is hard to keep up. I take modern comics, suffice to say that several competing this as an encouraging sign. When I began drafting narratives of comics history, some clearly shaped by this book, prospects for the continued popular cultural nationalism, are now in place (readers are growth of comics were unpromising: the U.S. comic urged to consult Diereck and Lefèvre, as well as the book market was in retreat, and the “graphic novel” essential David Kunzle). Regarding definition, I con- had yet to make a strong mark on the mainstream sider the question a detour—the outlines of the field publishing industry. Since then, the landscape has are by now agreed upon, despite continued wran- changed: the graphic novel has carved out a healthy gling over fine points. What definitions I propose in niche in the book trade, so that even this skeptic has this book are either purely local, meaning tactical, or finally dropped the habit of bracketing the term in else based on histories of practice rather than quotation marks (when in Rome . . .). In a space of abstract formal criteria (as in chapter 1’s discussion just a few years, market trends and patterns of of the comic book). Though chapter 2 offers a tool- reception have undergone terrific shifts, and alterna- box of notions for the aesthetic analysis of comics, it tive comics in particular—through acclaimed work does not presume to be definitive; rather, it consists by such creators as Spiegelman, Harvey Pekar, of an unfinished series of questions about what Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Lynda Barry, comics can do and how they can do it. In short, I do Chester Brown, Dan Clowes, Joe Sacco, and Chris not propose a new, overarching definition of comic Ware—have leapt into the spotlight. art—though I hope I have treated certain familiar At the moment, comic art in North America hap- questions more comprehensively than readers have pily suffers from a fever of promise, commercially seen before. and artistically, so much so that a larger critical audi- Finally, this study is but a progress report from ence is at last waking up to its possibilities. Readers one who is working as fast as he can to keep abreast are therefore urged to use what follows as a spring- of a rapidly accelerating field. Comic art is now wide board for their own explorations.

xv This page intentionally left blank ALTERNATIVE COMICS This page intentionally left blank CHAPTERCHAPTER ONE 1

COMIX, COMIC SHOPS, AND THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS, POST 1968

Comics have most often come in small packages: broadsheets, panels, strips, pamphlets. Yet recent emphasis on the graphic novel suggests that the form’s further artistic growth, or at least recognition, depends on the vitality of longer stories that exceed these small packages. Critical attention has turned to longer works that cannot fit within the narrow straits of the strip and other miniature formats. Notwithstanding the many brilliant uses of the newspaper strip as a ritualistic genre—one thinks of George Herriman, Charles Schulz, and a pantheon of others—the current renascence and critical reassessment of comics stems mainly from book-length works. Many of these works, not coincidentally, are alternative comics, determined to push back the thematic horizons of the form—and to avoid the colorful yet diversionary byways of familiar market genres such as the superhero. Critical study of these alternative comics and graphic novels begs certain historical questions: What conditions have allowed for the creation of such extended, formula-defying comics? What cultural and commercial circumstances have enabled the growth of alternative comics and the recognition of comics as a distinct literature? If, as Lee Erickson argues in The Economy of Literary Form, the evolution of a genre reveals an “economy of readers’ demands and authors’ productions” (3), then what “economy” accounts for the innovations seen in recent comics? The following chapter tries to answer these questions by placing the development of alternative comics—as literary form and as reading culture—within the history of American comics publishing, and in particular the history of that most puzzling of artifacts, the “comic book.”

3 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS

I offer here a new take on the comic book and its 1980s, a third way of packaging comics has gained reading culture. While some recent studies describe ground in American print culture: the “graphic novel,” the world of contemporary comic book readers in which in industry parlance means any book-length detail, most notably Matthew Pustz’s participant- comics narrative or compendium of such narratives observer study Comic Book Culture (1999), none (excepting volumes reprinting newspaper strips, which satisfactorily explains how this culture, in particular its comprise a long-lived yet critically invisible genre of “alternative” subculture, has reshaped comics as a their own). Each of these three packages, the news- literary form. This is because none has acknowledged paper page, the comic book, and the graphic novel, the current field’s contested origins in 1960s-era coun- has its own horizons in terms of content, audience, terculture or the way those origins still inform and and cultural cachet. enliven the field. None has succeeded in explaining As Samuel R. Delany has observed of “comics” in why this seemingly narrow and specialized field con- general, these formats are social objects (in the sense tinues to generate such explosive work or why the established by sociologist Lucien Goldmann), and as field should be of interest to the general reader. such are defined more by common usage than by a By reexamining the history of the comic book as priori formal criteria (Delany 239). As social objects, commodity and as literary form, and specifically by they come to us encrusted with connotations—or demonstrating the importance of countercultural or rather we come to them with associations and habits “underground” comic books within that history, I of thought inculcated through repeated use. If we are hope to answer these questions. Thus we will estab- to see comic art more clearly, we have to distinguish lish a cultural and economic milieu for alternative between these connotatively charged objects and the comics (and for the remainder of this study). art form itself. To this end, it helps to distinguish broadly between short-form comics and long-form comics. Each of these categories, the short form and FORMAT VERSUS ART FORM the long form, may come in a variety of packages, though each has traditionally been associated with Let us begin by taking a step back, so that we can one medium, or package, in particular. gain a sense of overview, or topsight: The short form, through the medium of daily and The history of comic art has been bound up in the weekly newspapers, remains the type of comic most histories of certain packages or publishing formats. In familiar to general readers in the United States. Under the United States, the most dominant of these pack- “short form” we may also group panels and strips in ages have been the newspaper comics page and the magazines, as well as a smattering of short features “comic book.” The former consists of a miscellany of within comic books. Yet the kernel of the short form features and genres, most bound by the rigid con- remains the newspaper strip, which, despite the recent straints of the daily strip or the Sunday; it appears plunge in newspaper reading, remains an entrenched within the larger miscellany of the newspaper, and part of American culture. Strips are small, formally comics produced for it are seen as secondary features rigid and ephemeral, though the more popular ones at best. The so-called comic book, on the other hand, are routinely gathered into best-selling books. While is a small, self-contained magazine or pamphlet they have recovered a degree of formal playfulness in (roughly half-tabloid in size). In the early days of the recent years, thanks to the interventions of popular industry, this magazine incorporated a miscellany of artists such as Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes), strips features, both narrative and non-narrative; more remain an editorially conservative medium, bound by recently, though, it has come to concentrate on a sin- inflexible formatting constraints. Artists and historians gle character or group of characters and, more often have written lovingly of the full pages that strip car- than not, a single story (typically between eighteen toonists once enjoyed, and have lamented the grad- and twenty-four pages in length). Since the late ual crowding of the medium into its present cramped

4 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS conditions, but the fact is that the age of the large- In the years after Maus, an initial fit of commercial format newspaper strip passed decades ago. Though enthusiasm for the graphic novel gave way to at best some artists have adapted well to the smaller format, flickering interest, as it became clear that Spiegelman’s strips continue to be cramped by unyielding editorial project was sui generis and did not necessarily herald policies. The ability of such strips to insinuate them- an explosion of comparable books. Only recently selves into daily routine has been at once their great- (especially since 2000) have graphic novels of similar est asset and greatest obstacle to continued growth: density and ambition begun to reach bookstores more to remake a newspaper comics page is to disrupt the regularly. Despite this, the term “graphic novel” has habits of many readers. This fact apparently looms so become common parlance—a curious thing, as few of large in the minds of editors that the newspaper page the volumes so christened aspire to be anything like tends to remain within its predictable bounds, with lit- novels in terms of structure, breadth, or coherence. tle change, year after year. Thus comics in the short Indeed a graphic novel can be almost anything: a form are, by and large, severely hobbled in terms of novel, a collection of interrelated or thematically simi- graphic and thematic potential. lar stories, a memoir, a travelogue or journal, a history, Comics in the long form, though in some ways a series of vignettes or lyrical observations, an episode freer, are hemmed in by other factors. Most spring from a longer work—you name it. Perhaps this very from the comic book industry, which in essence plasticity helps explain the currency of the term. What depends on the hobby of comic book collecting rather might have seemed at first to denote a distinct genre than appeals to a mass audience. From this enclave of has instead become an all-purpose tag for a vague specialized consumer ritual, some long-form comics new class of social object (one that, unlike the “comic have emerged to make claims on critical attention as book,” need not be grounded in the exact specifica- “graphic novels” (a convenient if often inaccurate tions of a given physical format). label). But the serialized graphic novel, as practiced Format is important. As Pascal Lefèvre has both by publishers within the so-called mainstream of remarked, format “influences the total concept of [a] the hobby and by those on its alternative fringe, has comic, not only the style, but also the content”; fur- until recently made little impact on the book trade. thermore, different formats “stimulate different man- The most notable critical success among graphic nov- ners of consuming” (“Published” 98). What we think els, Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-winning Maus, appeared about comic art is circumscribed by what we think not in serial comic books per se, but in Spiegelman about, and the ways we consume, the dominant for- and Françoise Mouly’s oversized art ’zine Raw (the mats of strip, comic book, and graphic novel. In fact, seminal journal for the comics avant-garde, 1980– 91). the cultural connotations of format, if accepted Though Raw depended to an extent on the sup- uncritically, can obscure or mystify the development port of comic book fans, its unusual origins, format, of the art form itself. Terms like “comic book” and and attitude pushed it to the margins of the hobby “graphic novel” are, strictly speaking, inaccurate; (see Spiegelman and Mouly, Interview, Read, and worse yet, they may encourage expectations, positive Interview with Cavalieri et al.). Maus, then, unlike or negative, that are not borne out by the material most volumes christened “graphic novels,” did not itself. The phrase “graphic novel,” for instance, seems have immediate roots in the periodical comic book. to imply a breadth and cohesion to which few graphic Long-form narratives that have been born out of the novels aspire, let alone achieve. The label, taken for traditional monthly comic book have fared notably granted within the narrow straits of the comic book less well over the long term—at least until very recently. hobby, threatens confusion as the graphic novel bids (Of late, graphic novels have become a growth area for acceptance within the wider field of literature and for bookstores, a phenomenon spurred in part by the criticism. (Ironically, the novel—once a disreputable, new popularity of translated manga, that is, Japanese bastard thing, radical in its formal instability—is here comics.) being invoked as the very byword of literary merit and

5 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS respectability.) Conversely, the term “comic book,” the narrowest sense) has been the most influential of fraught with pejorative connotations, seems to under- those objects in terms of shaping critical opinion. In sell the extraordinary work that has been done, and is fact the comic book has so monopolized the critical currently being done, in the long form. Yet to reject conception of comic art that it must be dealt with at such terms completely is to run afoul of common length. Periodical in origin, typically populist in nature, usage and to risk obscuring the subject behind neolo- and often characterized by the most mercenary of gisms that are clumsy, counterintuitive, and ahis- aims, the comic book is well-established as the domi- torical. (I have therefore grudgingly retained these nant identity of anglophone comics in the long form, familiar phrases but try to use them in specific and his- and has also been the target of some of the most sus- torically contextualized ways—hence my positing of tained and intense critical savaging of any cultural short-form and long-form as larger, more inclusive product in American history. Vilified, often misread, ill- categories.) understood, the comic book in its heyday inspired a Though this study makes occasional reference to tremendous degree of cultural anxiety—a kind of panic newspaper strips, its center of gravity is comics in the also seen in, say, early twentieth-century film censor- long form, specifically extended stories and novels— ship or recent discussions of the Internet, but unique as opposed to the anecdotal, repetitive, or episodic in its intensity and effectiveness. More than any other structures of the short form. Since the field of alterna- American medium, the comic book has been obscured tive comics (notwithstanding alternative newspaper by the terms of its own success. To understand the cartoonists such as Lynda Barry, Matt Groening, or recent move toward critical acceptance of comics as a Carol Lay) tends to be associated with sporadic comic literary form, we need to reexamine the development books and graphic novels, we will concentrate on the of this much-despised “comic book” as social object genres of the self-contained story, the novel, and the and market commodity. memoir, rather than the open-ended daily or even Granted, this development ought to be crystal- monthly serial. This is to say that, for the duration of clear by now. Numerous fan histories have traced the this study, we will privilege the kinds of comics for evolution of comic books, and, while quite a few have which the phrase “graphic novel” was originally unfortunately slipped out of print, many remain avail- coined. At the same time, though, readers should able even to the casual browser. (For the most casual, stay mindful of the restrictions and possibilities inher- many fan-authored websites give capsule histories of ent in serial comic book publication—issues that have the medium, of varied dependability and usefulness.) complicated the aesthetic growth of the art form, For a model of fan history that excels within its limits, and that will necessarily turn up, again and again, in I would recommend Ron Goulart’s detailed coffee the chapters ahead. Indeed one cannot begin to dis- table book, Great American Comic Books (2001); for cuss alternative comics, nor the recent recognition of a historical overview with academic cachet, Bradford comics as a literature, without first dealing with what Wright’s Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of the “comic book” is, how it has been distributed, Youth Culture in America (2001). But neither of these exhibited, and received, and how the entrenchment books does quite the job I want to do here. Each is of the comic book hobby has affected the aesthetic authoritative and valuable in its own way, yet each horizons of the form. is structured by certain blind spots or exclusions: Goulart’s work is an example par excellence of nostalgic reclamation, and as such privileges mainstream UNDERGROUND COMIX AND WHAT THEY DID market genres; Wright’s is a social history based on a TO THE COMIC BOOK self-styled “fun-house mirror” version of reflection theory, and by its own admission considers comic If the history of comics is necessarily a history of books “as a cultural representation, not as an art form” objects, then in the United States the comic book (in (xvii). (That there might be a productive dialogue

6 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS or reconciliation between these two approaches is During the underground period, the comic-book- apparently beside the point; Wright has a different as-social-object suffered a sea change. Comix, it is agenda.) Thus these two books embody dominant said, established the idea of comics as a form for adults trends, and nagging lapses, in comics scholarship. (not “just” children), but this statement needs further Both books are most persuasive when dealing with qualification. If we look carefully at that era, what we comic books prior to 1960, but neither is literary- find is something more specific: underground comix historical, that is, neither links its historical interests to trumpeted the arrival of not simply comics for adults the development of literary form. Robert C. Harvey’s but comic books for adults. What’s more, these comic The Art of the Comic Book (1996) offers a more books were most often for adults only (as the labels inclusive aesthetic history, but, rich as it is, its coverage on so many comix covers baldly proclaimed). Under- of recent trends is fitful, its take on alternative comics ground comix did not single-handedly make comics narrow. As a complement to these and other notable reading safe for adults—after all, newspaper strips studies, the following account focuses specially on a had long had an adult audience—but they did make neglected aspect of comic book history (the “under- comic books an adult commodity. Something about ground” comics movement), argues for its centrality, the act of purchasing an exclusively adult comic as an and, finally, makes a case for the continuing influence independent commodity (a “book” or magazine), as of the underground in today’s alternative comics press. opposed to purchasing comics in the context of a This account also seeks to demystify the commercial newspaper, made these illicit publications novel and mechanism (direct sales) by which “underground” alluring. It was through the underground comix that and “mainstream” comics gradually mingled, cross- comic books per se became an adult medium, and the pollinated, and gave birth to a new reading culture. self-contained nature of these “books,” so unlike the Let us begin, then, not at the beginning, but at a comics in even underground newspapers, made climax of sorts: the late 1960s to early 1970s, the the medium an ideal platform for kinds of expression era of underground comix (so-called). This era has at that were outrageously personal and self-regarding, last been fittingly chronicled by Patrick Rosenkranz’s even by the standards of the radical press from which Rebel Visions (2002), a long-gestating and stunningly comix emerged. detailed history (which readers are urged to seek out). The singular genius of the underground comic Rosenkranz, however, focuses minutely on the biog- books was the way they transformed an object that raphies of key artists in the movement and only mini- was jejune and mechanical in origin into a radically mally on the way underground comix subsequently new kind of expressive object, a vehicle for the most redefined the entire field. Though Rosenkranz makes personal and unguarded of revelations. While prior a case for the movement’s “legacy,” and others have comic books had featured some work that, in hind- also gestured in this direction, little work has been sight, appears quite personal and idiosyncratic, under- done to substantiate claims for the underground’s lit- ground comix conveyed an unprecedented sense of erary and artistic influence. Academically, the under- intimacy, rivaling the scandalizing disclosures of con- ground has been a period under near-erasure, with fessional poetry but shot through with fantasy, bur- the exception of a very few studies such as Joseph lesque, and self-satire. (Eventually the underground Witek’s Comic Books as History (1988). (Happily, would give birth to a type of autobiographical comics though, this is finally starting to change: for example, comparable to literary confessionalism at its most the 2002 University of Florida Conference on Comics nakedly personal, and this type would become central and Graphic Novels focused on the underground.) In to alternative comics, as we shall see in chapter 4.) what follows, then, I will make specific claims about Thus the underground worked an alchemical change the influence of the underground movement, arguing on what was basically an infelicitous medium, making that comix above all were the catalyst for a radically this familiar class of object into the carrier of a new new understanding of the art form. kind of meaning. In short, underground comix ironized

7 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS the comic book medium itself: the package was inher- publish something like that” (qtd. in Estren 52). ently at odds with the sort of material the artists Similarly, artist Victor Moscoso felt that Zap’s comic wanted to handle, and this tension gave the comix book format “opened the door,” enough so that he books their unique edge. accepted Crumb’s invitation to join Zap with issue It is difficult to date the exact origins of underground No. 2: “The form was perfect. A comic book, that comix, since they emerged from various sources (ama- size” (Rosenkranz 85). Though comix were crucially teur ’zines, college humor magazines, underground nurtured by a network of radical newspapers, such as newspapers, and psychedelic rock poster art) before the East Village Other and the Berkeley Barb, and coalescing into a distinct movement in the late six- early on gave rise to short-lived tabloids like Yellow ties. It is not difficult, however, to pinpoint the birth Dog (in its first incarnation, 1968–69) and Gothic of the underground comic book as a recognizable Blimp Works (1969), it was Crumb’s subversive class of object; that distinction belongs to R. Crumb’s appropriation of the comic book that proved to be the Zap Comix No. 1, printed and sold in early 1968 decisive break with the past. As Bill Griffith remarked, (Rosenkranz 69–72; Harvey, Comic Book 193–95). Crumb “reinvented the comic book. Took it over just Granted, a number of odd-sized booklets later recog- as other people of his generation took over music” nized as “comix” had been produced before Zap in (Rosenkranz 71). Zap became the catalyst for a whole small (often very small) print runs, including pieces new field of comix publishing because Crumb took by artists who would go on to greater fame.1 But it back the comic book and redefined what it could do. was not until Crumb’s innovation that the idea of cre- The reassessment of comics as a means of self- ating a sustainable underground comic book series expression, then, began with the underground’s took hold. Crumb would go on to create an anthol- usurpation of that commonplace object, the comic ogy version of Zap featuring other artists, beginning book. Again, by “comic book” I mean something quite with Zap No. 2 in mid-1968, and the series became particular: not just any publication consisting mostly the standard-bearer of the underground (Rosenkranz of comics, but specifically the standard-format comics 87–88, 123). magazine as developed for the U.S. newsstand mar- Historian Robert C. Harvey has described Crumb’s ket in the early 1930s and formularized by the early move to the comic book format as mere “happen- 1940s. This comic book was obviously misnamed: stance”; yet others have testified to the significance of not a book but a periodical, a cheap magazine printed seeing Crumb’s work published in precisely this form. on raunchy paper, descended from the foundering Clay Geerdes, quoted by Harvey himself, declared, “It pulp magazines of the day and a cousin of the was the book [that is, Zap] that turned on all those ephemeral strips found in newspapers. The under- light bulbs and taught people they did not have to ground comix artists of the late sixties seized this submit to the East Coast comic book monopoly.... medium, hitherto associated with anonymous, indus- Zap taught them they could do their own” (Comic trialized entertainment, and transformed it into a Book 210). Likewise, Les Daniels’s Comix: A History of vehicle for self-expression in a highly romanticized Comic Books in America (published in 1971) credits and radical way. Crumb with “making the independent underground It may be objected that I have defined the “comic comic book a viable form,” a development that would book” too narrowly, and, admittedly, it is tempting to still have been recent at the time of Daniels’s writing apply the term to any stand-alone publication consist- (169). Jay Lynch, cocreator of the seminal Chicago- ing of comic art (as some present-day authorities do). based comix book Bijou Funnies, recalled that the Yet the curious achievement of underground comix development of Bijou was spurred by Zap, which becomes much clearer when we acknowledge the Lynch and his collaborator Skip Williamson admired term’s historical specificity. The label “comic book,” so because it was a stand-alone publication (Rosenkranz rich with associations, belongs above all to a peculiar 119). The two “figured Crumb really had balls to package born in Depression-era America, the offspring

8 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS of industrial publicity and entrepreneurial zeal. Histo- mechanical approach to creation from the outset— rian Ian Gordon’s Comic Strips and Consumer Culture, not as rationalized and routine as a Ford factory, but 1890–1945 reminds us that the earliest examples of still artistically numbing. This was the “shop” or studio this kind of comic book (as opposed to previous system of comics production, nearly an assembly-line attempts to package comics in other formats) were affair, in which pages frequently changed hands and promotional giveaways for industries otherwise unas- artists routinely finished each other’s work. Various sociated with entertainment or art: oil companies, shoe shops—such as Harry “A” Chesler’s, the Eisner/Iger manufacturers, and so on. Other historians have noted studio, and Funnies Incorporated, all famed in fan this practice, bemusedly, as a preface to the “real” lore—sprang up to package complete comic book sto- business of making comic books, but Gordon wisely ries inexpensively for publishers looking to maximize points out that these premium comics had a long profits (see, for example, Harvey, “Shop System”; reach: they were read by thousands, perhaps even Goulart, “Sweatshops”; Eisner, “Art and Commerce” hundreds of thousands, and were apparently quite 8–12). The issue at stake was how to create new comic popular (130). Such promotional magazines primed book material in a format (and at a cost) established the pump, indeed established the conditions, for the when the comic book was still primarily a promotional sale of comics as self-contained commodities, inde- giveaway stuffed with newspaper reprints. pendent of newspapers and general interest maga- Even the unique physical dimensions of the comic zines. Thus the comic book was overwhelmingly a book were the result of cost cutting. Comic books commercial proposition from the outset, and only later were originally half-tabloid-size; their dimensions developed into a distinct artistic medium. Indeed, the came from folding a tabloid newspaper page in half years 1934 to 1945, from an aesthetic viewpoint, are to create roughly 8-by-10-inch pages. (The equiva- about nothing so much as discovering that this low- lent of sixteen tab-sized sheets could be laid out to rent format, originally adopted for purely mercenary create a pulpy 64-page booklet.) Comic books in this reasons, could be used to create comics that looked format—first as promotional giveaways, then as mar- and read very differently from their newspaper strip ket commodities—were created by the Eastern Color predecessors. This was a slow and inadvertent realiza- Printing Company, a Connecticut-based printer, to tion, hampered by the industry’s fixation on minimal wring more profits from occasionally idle presses. investment and maximum short-term profit. Only (For accounts of the comic book’s origins, see, for later would this format, generated by entrepreneur- example, Gordon, Comic Strips 129–31; Goulart, ial scurrying around the fringes of large and imper- Great 12–15; Waugh 337–40.) sonal industrial processes, become a fertile medium Cost-saving initiatives led to the flourishing studio for self-expression. That’s what the underground system of the late 1930s, as well as to the practice accomplished. (later standard) of publishers hiring staffs to produce or In hindsight, the peculiar format of American comic touch up comic books in-house. These economic con- books seems a historic anomaly rather than a logical ditions, inimical to reflection or revision, cemented the end development—which makes its reinvention and perception of the comic book as a shoddy, ephemeral reification by the comix underground even more diversion, a form of anonymous, relatively diluted, and ironic. Early comic books, consisting mainly of reprinted industrialized pabulum. Production schedules necessi- strips bought from newspaper syndicates, were tated the interchangeability of artists and the reliance cranked out at great speed and minimal cost for a on already-inbred story formulas. Positively, it might hungry audience of mostly juvenile readers; subse- be argued that the shop system allowed energetic quent efforts to satisfy demand with new material, young amateurs to bootstrap themselves to a level of native to the comic book, had to compete with these journeyman craftsmanship fairly quickly, and of course formative, shoestring productions (Harvey, Comic the shops did become seedbeds for some extraordi- Book 24–25). Thus the industry favored a highly nary talents. Yet the breakneck periodical scheduling

9 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS and crass production values of most comic books from It is this imaginative ferocity that Michael Chabon this era did much to tar the nascent medium with a captures in his Pulitzered novel on comic book history, reputation for amateurism, cynicism, and greed. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), This was the so-called Golden Age of fan lore. whose artist-hero, Joe Kavalier, imbues his comics with Indeed it yielded some golden work, much of it either such passion, desperation, and skill. And it is this wild- on the fringes of or entirely outside the shop system ness that is so often celebrated in the glowing, some- per se: for example, Will Eisner’s Spirit, Jack Cole’s times apocryphal lore of fandom, rich with accounts of Plastic Man, and the best of Joe Simon and Jack adolescent camaraderie and deadline-driven zeal: Kirby’s studio (whose output was wildly inconsistent); artists pulling all-nighters to crank out superhero tales; Carl Barks’s Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge et al., artists passing pages from hand to hand; artists jock- John Stanley’s Little Lulu, and, in the early fifties, eying for space in studios and apartments, or even work by Harvey Kurtzman (Two-Fisted Tales, Front- drawing in bathtubs. (In this sense, the underground line Combat, Mad) and the rest of the E.C (Enter- cartoonists of the 1960s were merely carrying on a tra- taining Comics) stable. Work of great vitality (as well dition of freewheeling bohemianism.) Such stories are as eccentricity, even flat-out weirdness) graced the hard to resist, stuffed as they are with color and life, burgeoning medium from the early forties onward, but they risk romanticizing what was at bottom a some of it in the various Superman-inspired “cos- bluntly commercial and exploitative business, one that, tume” comics, some of it in humor and “funny ani- with rare exceptions, produced work of flickering qual- mal” titles, and some of it, as the forties waned, in ity and slight ambition—eager, perhaps, but fitful and the more controversial genres of crime, romance, and prone to burnout, despite its occasional incandescent eventually horror comics. bursts. In spite of the medium’s considerable (millions- Work of wretched quality was much more com- selling) popularity in the Golden Age, it did little to mon, though in hindsight it too can be interesting. As nurture or encourage its practitioners. Art Spiegelman has remarked, this was a Golden Age In sum, the early growth of long-form comics in the of comic books as “termite” art—a notion lifted from United States was dictated by the emergence of a con- Manny Farber, whose seminal film criticism celebrated veniently exploitable medium, a product that proved work produced “where the spotlight of culture is cheap and accessible: the comic book as developed in nowhere in evidence, so that the craftsman can be the early to mid-thirties. This format proved successful ornery, wasteful, stubbornly self-involved,” creating where previous efforts had failed: first as a premium hell-for-leather art that “eat[s] its own boundaries, for other industries; then as an independent commod- and . . . leaves nothing in its path other than signs of ity nonetheless dependent on the syndicated news- eager, industrious unkempt activity” (Farber, qtd. in paper strip industry; then, finally, as a commodity Spiegelman and Kidd 8). Such a cultural borderland defined by its own original narrative material. The term can serve as a safe zone for play, a site where, as “comic book” belongs specifically to this object, one Roger Sabin puts it, “‘nobody is looking’, [so that] it is that, by demonstrating the possibilities of comics in the possible to experiment and flex creative muscles” long form, eventually opened the way for other pack- (Comics, Comix 9). In this embryonic period of fren- ages that also contained long-form stories (for exam- zied, market-driven play, observes Spiegelman, comic ple, larger magazines, albums, and graphic novels). Yet books opened “a direct gateway into the unrestrained it would take the singular intervention of the comix dream life of their creators” (Spiegelman and Kidd 8). underground to awaken this great potential. In the Thus even the most abject stuff from the period may meantime, this seemingly inauspicious medium defined hold some retrospective fascination—and the best the field of book-length comics in the United States for work, that in which orneriness and playfulness are decades. abetted by skill, evokes vivid, dreamlike worlds that, Perhaps it still does, to a degree. But things have once explored, are impossible to forget. gotten more complicated, for the comic book, despite

10 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS its familiarity, has long since retreated from mass to books of yore (at a time when comic books were niche medium. Since the early fifties, the medium’s declining from a mass medium to an acquired taste). commercial peak, the comic book has faded to the The chief culprit in this was cartoonist Crumb: margins of popular culture, from which it only occa- though his Zap Comix cannot truly be said to be the sionally sallies forth to trumpet some minor innova- “first” entry in the comix underground, it was the tion or unexpected outrage. It is not easy to explain first underground title by a lone cartoonist to be why comic books have been eclipsed this way—such published in what was recognizably the traditional happenings tend to evade explanation—but research comic book format. Thus Crumb demonstrated that suggests that several events coincided to hobble the it was possible (though not easy) for one cartoonist growth of the industry at its moment of greatest to take complete control of a package whose very commercial promise. These events included drastic dimensions were designed with impersonal assembly- realignments in American magazine distribution in the line production in mind. Crumb usurped what was mid-fifties; increasing competition from television and then the most common vehicle for long-form comics, other media; and, most notoriously, the tarring of the newsstand-style comic book, and turned it into a comic books during the censorious public campaigns deceptively friendly-looking container for stories that of the late 1940s and early 1950s.2 Many comic book could hardly be carried on mainstream newsstands, publishers acceded to criticism by publicly censoring due to their iconoclastic, sometimes scabrous, and themselves, that is, by adopting the onerous “Comics indeed radical content. Code” in 1954, a surrender that effectively affirmed In retrospect, this usurpation of the comic book the general perception of the medium as juvenile pap;3 seems perfect for Crumb’s larger project in the late then, throughout the latter 1950s and the 1960s, as if sixties, which was in effect to reclaim bygone images fearful of losing their juvenile readers, publishers resis- from American popular culture—from comics and ted changing the format or cover prices of their publi- animated cartooning in particular—and invest them cations, opting instead to decrease the amount of with new, subversive meanings. Crumb’s work from story and to boost advertising content. Prices remained this period, while original in many respects, owes static for an extended period, with few exceptions. (In much to earlier comics and cartoons, particularly in 1961, Dell, a hugely successful publisher, hiked its cover its preference for rubbery, polymorphous characters price from ten to fifteen cents, and the result proved (often anthropomorphized animals) and a broad, disastrous [Irving 26].) This price-fixing appears to exaggerated style. In Crumb one can spot the influ- have eaten away at profits, thus making the comic ence of not only various newspaper cartoonists but book an increasingly unrewarding venture for retailers also such comic book creators as funny animal master and distributors, and further tipping the industry into Carl Barks and grotesque humorist Basil Wolverton decline—a long fall eased in the 1960s by the ironic, (Powerhouse Pepper and so forth). Crumb’s charac- Marvel-led revival of the superhero genre and a nos- ters, compounded of these influences, waver dis- talgic appreciation cultivated partly by Pop Art (see turbingly between toothsome cuteness and parodic Sullivan; Varnedoe and Gopnik 213–26). grotesqueness. The artist’s originality lay in his use of In any case, it was this format, so widely associ- such figures to express a vision at once self-regarding, ated with faceless industrial entertainment, which almost solipsistic, yet socially aware, satirical, even underground cartoonists usurped and redefined in politically astute. These figures, warped by a giddy the late 1960s. Comix transformed the medium into desperation confessedly triggered by the artist’s use a vehicle for a febrile romanticism in tune with the of psychedelic drugs, had become part of his per- radical sensibilities of the Vietnam-era countercul- sonal language, his way of expressing his haunted, ture. The central irony of that most ironic of pack- questioning, radically skeptical view of American life ages, the underground comix book, was the way it and culture. Crumb colonized these received images mimicked the very format of the corporatized comic (including virulent racist and sexist stereotypes against

11 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS which he would push repeatedly and to which his comic book readers as juvenile is stressed just as often work would often succumb) and made them ripe for as it is flouted: traditional, kid-friendly fillers, such as adult treatment. short gag strips and activity pages, are common in Crumb’s efforts were inherently ironic, in a manner both Zap No. 1 and No. 0, as are references to “us not unlike that of the Pop artists before him. Indeed kids.” Most revealing is a mock editorial on the back of this is his signal contribution to American comics: the No. 0 that depicts an irate mother shredding her son’s ironizing of the comic book medium itself. With Zap comic books, a spoof both of the medium’s reputation Crumb achieved something that had eluded Pop Art: as “cheap trash” and of the guilty pleasure that adults he ironically usurped not only the content of comics derive from indulging in it (fig. 2). (that is, the characters and situations he had imbibed Aside from mocking the comic book format itself, from childhood onward) but also the format (the peri- Crumb’s early stories spoof hippie claims to enlight- odical comic book), achieving a union of form and enment and capitalist bromides in equal measure; content that Pop Art, ensconced within the fine art they brim with capricious takeoffs of magazine world, could not. Crumb’s Zap represented a reflexive, advertising and knowing swipes at American con- comic-book commentary on comic books unlike any- sumerism. One vignette in Zap No. 1, for instance, thing since the early days of Mad magazine (in its refers to “Kool Kustomers,” pokes fun at “Oscar original comic book incarnation, 1952–55). More- Meyer,” and claims to shrink “hemorhoids” [sic]. A over, Zap was free of Mad’s bottom-line commercial story in Zap No. 0 introduces Crumb’s guru/con man ambitions.4 character, Mr. Natural, with this slogan: “Kids! Be Crumb and many of his fellow comix artists—such sure to eat only Mr. Natural brand foods, and listen as Lynch, Williamson, and Kim Deitch—were eclectic to him on WZAP Radio!” No. 0 also contains the and drew inspiration from animation and especially satiric story “City of the Future,” a bit of mock- newspaper strips in addition to vintage comic books. utopian hype that perfectly undercuts the rhetoric of Indeed newspaper strips were crucial to enlarging their American progressivism (“Better worlds are being sense of comics beyond the generic confines of the built!”) while dreaming up more and more disturb- comic book medium. Yet it was in comic book format ing uses of technology. Such satiric thrusts, influ- that they advanced a pungent critique of American enced by the gleeful cynicism of Mad and college consumerism, turning the kitschy elements of the humor magazines, were distilled by Crumb into a medium in on itself. Mock comic-book-style advertise- perfect comic book package, one that kept spiraling ments and parodic paratexts (logotypes, banners, indi- in on itself in vertiginous recursions, always aware of cia, and of course the hated Comics Code seal of its comic book status. To say that Zap was a cynical approval) run rampant through the comix books; their package would be a bald understatement. insistent use invites readers to reconsider the relation- Crumb’s contemporaries were quick to seize on ships between text and reader implied in more con- such self-mocking elements, offering parodic takes ventional comic books. For instance, Zap No. 1 bears a on comic book conventions as well as barbed satires mock Code seal on its cover, as well as a banner just of the consumerist mentality. Often the comic book beneath the logo that parodies the ingratiating hype parodies were deliberately freighted with broader of comic book publishers: Zap Comics are Squinky social concerns, turning spoof into a vehicle for cul- Comics!! (fig. 1). Its back cover is a comics-style adver- tural argument. For instance, the cover to Wimmen’s tisement extolling the wonders of “turning on,” Comix No. 1 (1972), by editor Patricia Moodian, dis- replete with “before” and “after” photos of frustrated torts a clichéd scenario from romance comic books: a bourgeois “hang-ups” who have shed their inhibitions jilted woman looks enviously at a glamorous couple through the wonders of getting stoned. (A similar full- in a clinch, contrasting their picture-perfect features page ad in the follow-up Zap No. 0 [sic] provides step- with her own comically exaggerated ugliness (fig. 3). by-step instructions for smoking a joint.) The idea of Wimmen’s Comix, created by an all-female collective

14 Figure 3. Patricia Moodian, Wimmen’s Comix No. 1 (front cover). © Patricia Moodian-Pink. Used with permission.

15 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS in response to the masculine ethos of the comix comic book publishing establishment, which was scene, often deployed romance comic book tropes hobbled by its rigid Code of self-censorship, a reac- for subversive ends (as in, for instance, No. 1’s story tionary editorial culture, and debilitating economic “A Teenage Abortion,” by Lora Fountain, which practices. In so doing, comix opened the door to uses a first-person narrative style typical of romance comic books that would be wholly owned by their comics). Similarly charged parodic gestures distin- creators; that could be kept in print over the long guish the series Young Lust (launched in 1971 by Bill term (in theory and sometimes in practice), like Griffith and Jay Kinney), which billed itself as “the books rather than “magazines”; and that could con- underground romance comic”: art styles and para- tinue earning money for their creators in the form of textual elements from mainstream romance are care- royalties (unlike the “mainstream” comic books of fully parodied in stories about sexual threesomes, the time, most of which were produced by artists rock ‘n’ roll groupies, hippies, and GIs. Young Lust’s working for a flat, per-page rate). Though few if any attention to detail was impressive: its cover elements underground cartoonists could make a secure living and ersatz advertisements showed a keen eye for solely from their profession, and royalties were spo- ludicrous minutiae (fig. 4). Many other comix books, radic at best, comix did pave the way for a radical from Denis Kitchen’s Mom’s Homemade Comics to reassessment of the relationships among publishers, Dan O’Neill’s Comics & Stories (a nod to the classic creators, and intellectual properties, a reassessment Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories), likewise played that was to affect even mainstream comics in later with such details—familiar but usually neglected years. Comix were the first movement of what came aspects of the comic book reading experience. to be known among fans as “creator-owned” comic Going beyond Mad and its imitators, the comix books—and creator ownership was prerequisite to books at their most interesting transformed this the rise of alternative comics (see “Creators’ Rights”; received stuff into the rudiments of a highly personal Wiater and Bissette xv–xviii). language, one which might at any minute burst into Second, despite their adherence to the traditional startling lyric flights or retreat into obscurity and format, comix books broke with standard periodical abstraction. Thus they were akin to the puckish thiev- publishing: they were produced sporadically, with ings and reworkings of Pop Art. Yet, instead of seiz- relatively few series and a large number of one-offs. ing images from comic books and introducing them As a corollary to creator ownership, comix were into art galleries, Crumb and his followers took such dominated not by series titles but by the names and images, tore them loose from their traditional narra- reputations of their creators. Though there were a tive moorings, and then injected them back into what few long-lived series, mostly anthologies such as appeared to be standard comic books—thereby inter- Zap, Bijou, Yellow Dog, and Slow Death, these were vening in an entirely different economy, one open to mostly published irregularly and were exceptions to the grass-roots capitalism of the counterculture. the general rule. (Even the prolific Crumb gravitated While the comic books produced by Crumb and his toward one-shots, such as Homegrown Funnies, fellow underground artists could not be offered for People’s Comix, and XYZ.) sale in the mainstream newsstand market, they did Third, comix introduced an “alternative” ethos that become mainstays of an alternative economy cen- valued the productions of the lone cartoonist over tered around the boutiques (or “head shops”) of the collaborative or assembly-line work. In essence, comix so-called hippie movement. made comic books safe for auteur theory: they estab- Spurred by Crumb’s seminal achievement, under- lished a poetic ethos of individual expression. By poetic ground comix books shaped the growth of long- I mean, not the literal sense, nor the vernacular sense form comics in four crucial ways. of beautiful or elevated, but the idea that cartoonists First, they demonstrated that it was possible to pro- were expected to express themselves singly, just as a duce booklets of comics from outside the dominant poet is typically presumed to speak with a lone voice.

17 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS

This tendency was not absolute, as there were some practices and narrative clichés of “mainstream” collaborative comix (for instance, the Zap “jams,” in comic books. In time this resistance would make which the artists challenged each other with impro- itself felt even at the level of packaging. Though the visatory riffs). Such group efforts, however, were vehicle of choice was at first the familiar comic book, exceptions. Today the privileging of self-expression in readers have since grown accustomed to seeing alternative comic books is a very strong tendency— long-form comics in a greater variety of packages. the rule rather than the exception—and alternative The liberatory potential of underground comix comics publishers favor the comic book as a “solo” was most clearly realized by Spiegelman’s Maus, per- vehicle for the individual cartoonist. These comic haps the urtext of alternative comics. A personal, not books are so much a product of the underground to say poetic, tale, derived from oral history and lived ethos, and so resistant to the mainstream model of experience, Maus invokes a familiar genre (“funny production, that even their indicia and sporadic letter animals”) to broach very difficult, politically super- columns are often written in the artist’s own distinc- charged material, and was produced outside the tive hand. boundaries of conventional comic book publishing. Finally, many of the comix books were awash in Spiegelman’s ironic use of animals to figure human irony, based on the appropriation of popular (or once- beings (one of the most controversial elements in popular) characters, styles, genres, and tropes for rad- Maus) departs from R. Crumb’s ironized funny ani- ically personal and sometimes politically subversive mal figures such as Fritz the Cat; indeed, the germ of ends. Not only Crumb but also many other under- Maus was a three-page story titled “Maus” that ground cartoonists made themselves at home among Spiegelman produced in 1973 for an animal-themed shopworn ideas inherited from comics and cartoons underground comic book called Funny Aminals [sic]. past, using and redefining certain character types (for In fact Maus represents the entry of the underground example, funny animals, such as in comix by Lynch, into the mainstream book trade, an achievement Deitch, and Bobby London) or genres (for example, owed in part to the example of Crumb and other horror comics, as in Skull, or superheroes, as in Gilbert comix artists. Shelton’s “Wonder Warthog” and Spain’s “Trash- The history of long-form comics in English, then, man”). They pirated the past with subversive glee: owes much to the intervention of comix. In the form- Deitch’s Waldo the Cat was an alcoholic’s hallucina- ative Zap period, comix constituted a genuinely roman- tion; Lynch’s “Nard and Pat” were a human and cat tic, highly individualistic movement that sought to pair in which the cat was more hip, socially adept, liberate the comic book as a vehicle for personal and sexually active than his human companion; and expression, while yet wallowing in the medium’s rep- Spain’s Trashman was an urban guerrilla fighting for utation for lurid, rough-hewn, populist entertainment the insurgent “6th International,” a Marxist revolu- (its “termite” origins). Like the Beats, to whom many tionary group. comix artists looked for inspiration, the pioneers of Taken together, the four above-listed factors comix were self-styled hipsters and iconoclasts who would, paradoxically, serve to free long-form comics both rejected and built on prior traditions; they too from complete dependence on the standard comic harbored subversive, in some cases revolutionary, book package. These factors—sporadic publication, political ideas and were to a degree associated with a the emphasis on the author rather than established radically democratic realignment of politics. As early commercial properties, the development of an alter- nineteenth-century romanticism was informed by rev- native economy, and the corrosive reexamination of olution (as utopian promise, bitter disappointment, familiar tropes—eventually coalesced into the alter- and/or looming political threat), so the comix move- native comics movement of the 1980s and 1990s, ment was sparked by the political energy of the late born within comics fandom but defined by its insis- sixties counterculture, and reflected its demands for tent, even strident, opposition to the normative peace and political reform. The comix “underground”

18 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS was spurred by a sense of possibility that was at least was the way it at once paid homage to the comic partly political in nature, and, like prior romantic book as quintessential American kitsch and laid the movements, it looked forward to revolutionary groundwork for alternative approaches to comic art, realignments in the social order with a mix of over- approaches that would one day threaten the main- weening optimism and fearful ambivalence (the latter stream comic book with creative obsolescence. Central perhaps best seen in Crumb’s uneasy blend of to this achievement was the way comix artists, spurred utopian and reactionary sentiment). by Crumb, engaged the comic book medium itself as The comix movement eventually fell victim to a vehicle for cultural subversion. Yet in this lies a crushing political disappointments. In 1973 the United deeper irony, for the medium appears to have sub- States Supreme Court deferred the question of verted their radical impulses in turn. The shift among “obscenity” to local community standards (Miller underground cartoonists toward comic books (as v. California), a reversion that threatened national opposed to the college magazines and radical papers circulation of the often controversial comix. Mean- in which they first gained notice) paralleled the shift while, the rise of antidrug (or more accurately anti- in mainstream comics history away from newspaper paraphernalia) laws began to squeeze the so-called strips, toward comics magazines as independent head shops out of existence, thus crippling under- commodities. Arguably, then, comix books urged the ground distribution. These suppressive moves, in the underground away from engagement in the radical context of political disaffection and the general ener- press, thus in larger political issues, and toward a vation of the counterculture, proved devastating to more reflexive involvement with “comix” as such. comix (see Rosenkranz 215, 219–20; Estren 230; This is evident not only in the ubiquitous parodic ges- Sabin, Adult 174). tures of the comix books, including their very pack- In this uncertain climate, the field became increas- aging, but also in the brief, meteoric growth in comix ingly fractious, as participants fought for diminishing as an entertainment industry in the early seventies. resources. Even as publishers wavered, reeling from Though explicitly political work continued to appear the possibilities of legal repression, a mushroom in comix well after this period—indeed, some of growth of creators and titles had already filled their the most explicitly political comix came after 1973— catalogs. A glut of new comix, many of them criti- by the mid-seventies the comix had taken on cized as imitative and poorly produced, flooded the more and more characteristics of their detested main- market (Beerbohm, “Origins” 120; Goodrick and stream counterparts. Despite its radical potential, by Donahue 9; Rosenkranz 222–23). Boom turned to 1975 the comix revolution ended up looking less bust: by the mid-1970s the movement had suc- political than stylistic in nature—and rather parochial cumbed to a sense of depletion at once economic at that. and cultural. Paper costs soared while business In short the movement, once stretched, proved dropped sharply (Sabin, Adult 174; Estren 8). At the flaccid. As comix became entrenched, they lost their same time, in the words of Art Spiegelman, “what impetus and collective focus both politically and, even- had seemed like a revolution simply deflated into a tually, aesthetically. Indeed the underground yielded a lifestyle” (Spiegelman and Mouly, Read 6). Comix great many retrograde and poorly crafted publications, succumbed to their own clichés—sex, drugs and some hateful, others merely impenetrable. This cultural hedonism, sapped of political will—and withered, borderland, which had served as breeding ground for retreating to the margins of the culture. both radical and reactionary impulses, finally became a This too is hard to understand, as documentation prison. The commodification of underground comic remains scant (though Rosenkranz’s Rebel Visions books diverted the energies of the movement into a has helped). A partial explanation might be found narrow cul-de-sac, from which its reflexive cynicism within the very terms of the underground’s success. offered no escape. As the underground developed In hindsight, the movement’s signal achievement an insular comic book industry of its own, the

19 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS movement’s empowering but double-edged embrace where American-style comic books had never taken of amateurism combined with rapid and rapacious hold (see Gravett, “Euro-Comics”). After years in economic growth to create a flood of wretched mate- eclipse, the underground ethos would reemerge in a rial. By the mid-1970s many comix creators seemed different context, again bracketed by comic book fan- ambivalent about that growth at best, and some dom but post-punk in outlook and responsive to new began to redirect their satiric energy at comix them- concerns. A reinvigorating, recombinant approach to selves, seeing in the new market a reflection of the comic art, international in character but inspired by hated mainstream comic book industry (Estren the American underground, came to the fore in the 250–56; Rosenkranz 221–22).5 To achieve escape eighties, labeled “alternative” or “the new comics” velocity, some tried other kinds of publications—ulti- but clearly indebted to the comix of yesteryear. mately, this is where such seminal magazines as With the advent of “the new comics” (a phrase Arcade, Raw and Weirdo came from—while some much bandied about in the late 1980s), the tradi- faded to obscurity, weighted down by the new clichés. tional relationship between comics content and Many comix remained volatile and subversive: publishing format became unhinged, allowing for witness for example the feminist commentary in the experimental use of various packages. Today, Wimmen’s Comix, or the ecologically themed horror even as the traditional comic book struggles for sur- of Slow Death. Yet their topical thrust was often vival at the behest of an ever-attenuating fandom, blunted, or if not blunted then turned inward, by a the graphic novel, in its many shapes, has become the preoccupation with their chosen medium. In that sense critical byword of the new comics. Yet, though the comix were truly products, and reflections, of comic comic book per se no longer has a monopoly on book fandom, though superficially remote from fan- the long form, it still exerts a powerful, not-to-be- dom’s celebratory, nostalgic ethos. Ultimately what underestimated tug on the imaginations of creators was most “political” about them, most effective, was and fans—and, as we are about to see, the passions simply the freedom with which they approached the of mainstream comic book collectors have played comics form. At their best they combined reflexive their own crucial role in legitimizing the graphic playfulness with an acute social vision, showing how novel and establishing a critical beachhead for alter- much comics could do in the right hands; at their worst native comics. they were self-absorbed and self-defeating, as if prefiguring the counterculture’s retrenchment—its decline from revolution to mere “lifestyle.” By the late 1970s THE DIRECT MARKET AND THE CONSOLIDATION comix had come to symbolize the fecklessness and OF FANDOM anomie of the fading counterculture, as effectively as they had symbolized its energy and political agency While inspired, indeed catalyzed, by the creative just a few years earlier. Today the books are simply arti- freedom of the undergrounds, alternative comics also facts, collectible symbols of yet another “lost” era that owe much to subsequent practical changes in the dis- consumers can nostalgically long for, its political and tribution and exhibition of comic books as products— cultural traumas safely blurred. changes in which the underground played a vital but But from the promise of underground comix not exclusive role. Most of today’s long-form comics stemmed the alternative comic book and graphic are products of a specific, highly ritualized, and novel of the eighties and nineties, a vision of long- essentially commercial scene known as the direct form comics that allowed unprecedented aesthetic market comic book shop—a scene at once rooted in freedom and diversity, as well as a new sense of pur- the underground and insulated from its animating pose. Even as the undergrounds per se retrenched, political and cultural concerns. The transformation their influence spread, informing new kinds of comics of contemporary comics can be traced directly to in the United States and, ironically, abroad, even this commercial environment, and because that

20 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS environment has by turns both encouraged and The current market thus represents a paradox. It stunted the art form, it requires careful analysis. This has roots both in the comix counterculture of the late is not simply a case of underground iconoclasts invig- sixties (in particular its distribution network, which orating the art form, then fans smothering it; nor is it prior to 1973 constituted a thriving alternative econ- simply a case of the lowly comic book being sup- omy) and in the nostalgic interests of a minority of planted by more reputable forms. Rather, the influ- dedicated comic book collectors, particularly super- ence of the market is a matter of encouraging and hero collectors, who began to correspond and barter debilitating influences shrink-wrapped together. with each other during the late fifties, and more visi- Today’s direct market represents a specialized bly from 1965 onwards (see Schelly 20–21, 89–97). hobby, a subculture that has grown from grassroots This market, which now places such emphasis on the anarchy (the private and inchoate discourse of iso- promotion of new mainstream comic books, origi- lated fan conclaves) to a highly codified, in some nally grew out of two overlapping yet distinct fields, sense disciplined and commodified practice—in short, both considered marginal by mainstream publishers: an organized “fandom.” This fandom revolves around a hobbyists’ network concerned with bartering old comic shops, trade magazines, collectors’ price comic books and the underground distribution meth- guides, large- and small-scale conventions, and, now ods established by comix. From this historic confla- overwhelmingly, the rapid-fire discourses of the tion, a loose network of retailers developed in the Internet. Instrumental in the rise of this fandom were late sixties and early seventies, some of whom began such institutions as used bookstores, small-circulation to carry new mainstream comic books alongside amateur ’zines (fanzines), amateur press alliances underground publications. Many of these retail out- (APAs), conventions, mail-order businesses, and lets were firmly rooted in the counterculture. “letterhacking” (that is, writing letters for publica- Despite overviews by scholars such as Roger Sabin tion in comic books and corresponding with other (for example, Adult Comics) and Bradford Wright such writers, or letterhacks). Born out of science fic- (Comic Book Nation), this crucial transitional period tion fandom in the days of the hectographed and remains thinly documented. Because no book has yet mimeographed fanzine, comic book fandom rose to emerged to provide a comprehensive, critical history prominence—to self-consciousness, anyway—with of the direct market, it remains difficult to show pre- the advent of comics-specific fanzines and price cisely how much underground and mainstream comic guides in the early mid-sixties, followed shortly by books overlapped in these early shops.7 Yet it is the establishment of specialized conventions in known that many comic shops did grow out of 1964.6 This fandom, increasingly aware of its buying “head” shops, and as such routinely brought vintage power and creative influence, exerted significant pull comic books and new comix together within the same on the content of superhero comic books from the space. The Bay Area’s “Comics & Comix,” by all early sixties onwards, a pull that major publishers appearances the first comic book retail chain in the Marvel and DC belatedly acknowledged in the late United States, made this commixing explicit in its very sixties and early seventies by hiring fans to critical name and purchased entire lots of mainstream comic editorial positions. By the early eighties, the acceler- books from local newsstand distributors so that ating decline of newsstand sales led these publishers they could be racked alongside underground publica- to rely increasingly on the then newly emergent fan tions (Schelly 155; Beerbohm, “Origins” 125). Such (that is, direct) market to stave off disaster (see, for underground-friendly shops were, arguably, the root example, news coverage in The Comics Journal, of the direct market. Also, the antiestablishment ethos circa 1980–81). This situation led, albeit gradually, to of comix appears to have influenced fanzines and the an overwhelming emphasis on organized fandom as discourse of fandom in general. Comix challenged the the comic book’s core audience—and on the cos- dominantly conservative tone of early fanzines, and in tumed superhero as its core genre. their wake the amateur strips and critical commentary

21 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS in some prominent ’zines showed a marked shift away predominantly American phenomenon, it has had from a hitherto overwhelming emphasis on the super- much influence in other English-reading countries hero (Schelly 115, 130–32). (Retrenchment would (most notably Canada and Great Britain). This mar- come later, with the co-optation of the direct market ket, because of its narrow demographics, strong by superhero publishers.) In addition, the rhetoric of sense of tradition, and efficient means of distribu- fandom began to reflect, however tentatively, under- tion, has nurtured the growth of fan-friendly prod- ground cartoonists’ attitudes toward intellectual prop- ucts such as the graphic novel and the “limited” or erty and creative freedom, even as comic book mini-series, both significant departures in long-form professionals began participating in “fan” publica- comics narrative. It has also led to the unhinging of tions (Schelly 137–39). traditional work-for-hire arrangements between cre- By the early mid-seventies, entrepreneurs, first ators and publishers, and to stormy disputes over among them New York comics convention organizer intellectual property (or “creator’s rights”), as the Phil Seuling, had formalized these arrangements by economic and ideological lessons of the under- going “directly” to major publishers DC and Marvel ground have rippled through fandom. The result is a and buying non-returnable comics at deep discounts. cultural scene, international in scope but American in (The late Seuling, whose impact is a matter of record, focus, in which iconophilia and iconoclasm, reaction has become a part of fan lore.) With this arrange- and radicalism, clash and mingle. This is the sustain- ment in place by 1975, a hobby hitherto centered on ing yet problematic context for alternative comics. the trade of collectible old comics began to take in an This direct market, its terms codified by the early increasing influx of new product. Yet the balance of eighties, offers publishers the advantages of low entry trade in the shops continued to favor old comic costs and a high degree of predictability. It functions books, the new output of the major publishers being in essence as a subscription system, one in which the fairly small and the underground having withered. subscriber is not the individual consumer but rather This continued until the early eighties, at which point the comic shop, which will in turn offer the product to the major publishers, as noted, began to concentrate consumers. (For brief accounts of how this market on this all-important fan market. The growing works, see Sabin, Adult 65–69, and McAllister, emphasis on fandom, among not only mainstream “Cultural Argument” 65–66.) To be more precise, the publishers but also upstart publishers adapted specif- direct market offers publishers leverage in two crucial ically to the new conditions, led to the growth of spe- ways: First, orders are solicited from retailers in cialty shops so that by the early nineties there were advance of publication so that the size of print runs thousands of such shops in existence, as opposed to can be adjusted according to anticipated demand. perhaps two dozen twenty years earlier (hard figures This helps avoid the wasteful and costly overprinting are tough to find, but see, for example, Beerbohm, that typifies magazine publishing. It is in this sense “Origins” 119; Sabin, Comics, Comix 157; “Comic that comic book publishing works by subscription: Book Crisis”). Though crucially indebted to, indeed advance ordering underwrites the costs of printing, rooted in, the underground era, this burgeoning mar- making the work possible in the first place. (Such sub- ket was a far cry from the fervidly romantic counter- scription arrangements, of course, have also played a culture of the early comix. crucial role in the development of popular prose fic- Today the direct market is decidedly post- tion, providing a practical, material foundation for the underground in outlook. It consists of an interna- ascendancy of the novel.) Second, unlike regular news- tional network of stores specializing in American stand sales, direct market orders are non-returnable. comic books, including both mainstream and alter- Whereas most magazine sales are handled on a de native titles but especially beholden to large-scale facto consignment basis, with unsold leftovers being mainstream publishers. This network suffers from a returned to publishers or destroyed (to the vendor’s high rate of attrition and so is in constant flux. A credit), direct market comic books are owned outright

22 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS by vendors and, with few exceptions, cannot be advantages for publishers encourage the production returned. This is why, in the eyes of publishers, it is of a surfeit of new product. The result is an excess of shop owners rather than readers who are the ultimate comic books each month, shrilly marketed, of which customer: the publisher’s concerns end with the most retailers can order only a small sample. The retailer’s order. This has the effect of softening the effects of this asymmetry have been most keenly felt economic risk for publishers to a significant degree, in the wake of the euphoric comic-book speculation for, without having to absorb the cost of returns, pub- of the early 1990s, an economic binge that ended in lishers are in a better position to experiment with new the closing of thousands of shops and, eventually, product. It is retailers who have to bear the brunt of the drastic consolidation of the market’s distribution unsold, unsuccessful comics. system (see The Comics Journal’s coverage of the Obviously, there is a fundamental asymmetry at industry 1994–97, especially “State of the Industry/ work here, in that retailers are exposed to risk while State of the Art Form” and “Comic Book Crisis”). In publishers are relatively insulated from it. This arrange- a climate such as this, retailers are intensely aware of ment, with minimal cost and maximal predictability the risks they face. for publishers, has encouraged the rise of small, Nonetheless the direct market has stoked the alternative presses and even scores of self-publishing development of long-form comics. Recent innova- comics creators, some of whom are regarded as tions in the long form, most notably the establish- important figures within the industry (in comic books, ment of the graphic novel as a viable package, stem self-publishing is not a sign of dilettantism). To a con- from the relative prosperity of the market in the siderable degree, this growth in the alternative press 1980s, when direct-sales comic shops seemed a has effectively unlocked the comic book’s artistic hotbed of entrepreneurship and the alternative press potential. On the retailer’s side, advantages to this thrived. Mainstream comics had adopted under- system include a relatively loyal and extremely ground distribution methods, and alternative comics knowledgeable clientele, as well as substantial finan- basked in the increased exposure. This commercial cial incentives (for example, volume discounts and high season excited a new enthusiasm for pushing plentiful in-store advertising). These advantages back the artistic horizons of the form. Once again stoked the rapid growth of the comics retail network aesthetic developments were spurred by commercial in the eighties, as the industry, spurred by collector developments (as had been the case during the investment in popular titles, seemed to grow from medium’s first flush of popularity, almost half a strength to strength. century before). Yet disadvantages to retailers are significant, in particular the financial drain caused by investment in poor-selling comics. Unlike vendors in the newsstand SHOPS AS TEXTS market, comic shop retailers have to keep everything that doesn’t sell, which means that unsold comics not To understand clearly this relationship between com- only fail to earn back their initial cost but also con- mercial and artistic growth, a historical analogy may sume physical space and person-hours when they help: consider the crucial, sustaining relationship that pass into inventory. The occasional appreciation of developed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collectible comic books (caused by manufactured Britain and America between popular fiction and the scarcity in the back-issue trade) only partly compen- commercial “circulating libraries.” Like comic shops, sates for the fact that most unsold inventory does these so-called libraries had a pronounced impact not grow significantly in value and simply eats up on the history of a literary form, in that they nur- room, time, and money. This situation, only belatedly tured the growth of fiction-by-parts, a trend that recognized as a major disadvantage, tends to dis- eventually hardened into the institution of the courage risk-taking by retailers, even as the economic Victorian three-part (or “three-decker”) novel. From

23 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS the early-to-mid-eighteenth century through the late (for example, sorting by publisher, or simply alpha- nineteenth, the growth of such circulating libraries, betically by series). Thus they differ from bookshops with their subscription arrangements, made long-form or libraries in their layout. However, consumers’ aware- prose narrative affordable to middle-class readers, with ness of intertextuality is nonetheless stimulated by their of course significant structural and aesthetic conse- total immersion in the shop environment, and, more quences for the works in question. Literary historians important, by the periodical nature of most comic have tended to gauze over the crucial importance of books, which keeps buyers coming back for more at these commercial lending libraries; indeed, criticism regular intervals. The breakdown of comic book nar- has assumed the inevitability and desirability of the rative into brief, relatively frequent installments move away from commercial subscription, toward (along with the concomitant emphasis on the hoard- the primacy of the Novel as a freestanding and aes- ing of successive issues) provides a strong material thetically self-sufficient, even monumental, form of basis for the fan’s heightened sense of intertextuality. expression. Yet the fact of the libraries’ tremendous In contrast to the circulating libraries, which (like influence, on form and audience, and indeed on pop- video stores today) stressed renting rather than ular literacy, remains, a facet of print culture deserv- buying, comic shops are about getting and keeping; ing further study.8 In the field of comic books, the rise possession is key. As Roger Sabin observes, buying of the direct market has had a comparable, if scaled “for investment” is endemic to the direct market, down, effect. and indeed often defines the relationship between Like the commercial lending library, the comic the industry and fandom (Adult 67). This crucial dif- book shop has in effect informed and disciplined its ference reflects fan culture’s commodification of clientele. As Edward Jacobs has observed of lending experience—a material practice admittedly remote libraries in the late eighteenth century, so too direct from the ethos of the library. market comic shops have given readers “an unprece- Despite this core difference, circulating libraries and dented material basis for recognizing intertextual rela- comic shops also invite comparison on the matter of tionships, and for identifying generic conventions” advertising and publicity. Jacobs observes that the con- (616). Jacobs links this emphasis on intertextuality ventions of the Gothic romance, so popular within the with the physical layout of the shops (libraries) them- circulating libraries, were used to promote the libraries selves, in which thematically similar books were themselves: their publicity ironically deployed diver- grouped together, a practice that urged readers to see sion, misdirection, and mystery to stimulate the inter- books as variations on particular genres rather than as est of seasoned readers in the genre. In this way the singular expressions. Indeed, Jacobs argues that the narrative properties of the Gothic reinforced, or, in physical ordering of the circulating libraries consti- Jacobs’s apt phrase, “discursively co-operated” with, tuted an “institutional foregrounding of the generi- the physical strategies by which the libraries would iso- cism of all texts” (617–18). In other words, these late and exhibit the genre (617–18). In comparable libraries established a mutually reinforcing relationship fashion, comic book publishers in the 1980s developed between the organization of a commercial space and print advertising and in-shop promotional gimmicks the content of the work exhibited in that space. In a (often partly paid for by retailers) that emphasized dis- sense this space/content relationship serves to disci- tinctive graphic elements from the comics themselves, pline the consumer, making her or him a more sophis- and, like the comics, depended on the effects of perio- ticated reader and fan. dicity: the maintenance of suspense, the gradual Things are slightly different in comic shops, where unveiling of the new, and the resultant accretion of the emphasis on genericism and intertextuality is meaning. At its most forceful, this advertising was less dependent on precise physical sorting by genre. aggressively intertextual, complementing the prom- Although many shops do rack comic books according ised comic books with posters, flyers, badges, toys, to genre, others do not, preferring other methods and even other comic books, thus creating a diverting,

24 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS ever-changing retail environment—one in which the circulating libraries to other entrepreneurs (Erickson experience of reading and the experience of buying 138). Thus he was involved in all phases of the trade.9 were effectively blurred. In short, the shop environ- Such multifaceted entrepreneurial endeavors have ment itself functioned as an elaborate paratext to the influenced the distribution, exhibition, and cultural comic books; consumer rituals defined the margins, influence of popular fiction and comic books alike. sometimes even the core content, of the reading Admittedly, the “circulating library” analogy fails experience. insofar as it cannot account for comic book fandom’s Like the circulating libraries, comic shops narrowed emphasis on collecting. The libraries were designed to the gap between audience and authors, establishing a make books accessible to a wider public at a time space through which readers and prospective creators when book costs were relatively high and buying might have more direct access to the publishing books outright was therefore thought to be the pre- industry. This was crucial for the development of serve of the wealthy. In contrast, the direct market was small-press and alternative comics. The direct market, designed to appeal, with pinpoint accuracy, to a because of its low startup costs and relatively small (or smaller, more committed audience that could be predictable) economic risks, fostered the idea that expected to spend a disproportionate share of its fans might create their own comics, not simply at an income on comic books. So, whereas the circulating amateur level, as in the early fanzines, but on a more libraries represented an opening out of popular print or less level playing field with established profession- culture, the direct market represented in some sense a als. Direct distribution meant dramatically increased narrowing in: specialized hobby shops tend to be less access for self-publishing entrepreneurs, and the responsive to demands for economy and accessibility. effacing of the once-rigid distinction between ama- While circulating libraries fostered a new kind of popu- teur and pro. Indeed the number and variety of self- lar narrative—its kernel the Gothic romance—comic published comic book projects—some extraordinarily shops seem inordinately dedicated to the nostalgic well crafted, others dismal—has made that distinction preservation of the old and outworn. (Of course there rather porous (a phenomenon encouraged by the is another, perhaps related, difference to consider: continual involvement of fans at all levels of the whereas the circulating libraries were consistently con- industry). demned as encouragements to feminine frivolity, con- Other distinctions too are rather arbitrary. As in the temporary comic book shops are generally said to be circulating libraries, specialized distribution to comic grossly, overwhelmingly, male.) Yet the direct market, shops has enabled distributors and retailers to delve in spite of its debilitating emphasis on preservation and sporadically into the business of publishing. A number collection, gave birth to a new sense of aesthetic possi- of early direct market entrepreneurs (for example, bility, spurred by the example of the undergrounds. Bud Plant) and companies (for example, Pacific Just as the Victorian three-decker novel sprang from Comics, Capital Comics) involved themselves in all the lending libraries, the much-discussed “graphic phases of the industry, and some entrepreneurs con- novel” owed its very life to this new market. tinue to combine publishing, distributing, and retailing interests (though usually “separated” by corporate firewalls). In similar fashion, circulating library propri- THE EVOLUTION OF DIRECT MARKET etors often went into publishing books themselves COMIC BOOKS and evidently sought to recruit new, inexpensive talent (often female, very often anonymous) from Many of the alternative comics studied herein were among their patrons. To take the best-known exam- born of the direct market during its 1980s heyday, ple, William Lane, founder of the Minerva Library, also when rising retail sales encouraged creative growth created his own publishing house, the Minerva Press, and, to a degree, diversification. While comic books in addition to wholesaling complete, preexisting in this period continued to be driven mainly by

25 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS established genres such as the superhero (indeed Eclipse, Pacific, Capital, and, in Canada, Andromeda superhero publishers sought to strengthen their grip Publications and Vortex Comics. Some of these pub- on the market), the burgeoning alternative scene, lishing companies, not surprisingly, grew out of suc- rooted in the underground, urged the development of cessful retail and distribution businesses (for comic books that either sidestepped genre formulas example, Pacific and Capital). or twisted them in novel ways. Gradually the ten- Notable publications from this second wave of sion between mainstream and underground aesthe- ground-level comics (the late seventies to early eight- tics made itself felt in the conversations of fans: for ies) included Sabre, a self-contained album by Don some, the terms “independent” and “alternative,” McGregor and Paul Gulacy (Eclipse, 1978); Elfquest, a though seemingly near-synonymous, came to repre- serialized fantasy epic by Wendy and Richard Pini sent opposing aesthetic tendencies. Today the cate- (self-published under the WaRP Graphics imprint, gory “independent comics” may include, often does 1978); Capt. Victory and the Galactic Rangers, a tra- include, formula fiction inspired by the so-called ditional four-color series by mainstream veteran Jack mainstream, including much heroic fantasy; while Kirby (Pacific, 1981); and, in Canada, at least two “alternative” more often denotes satirical, political, titles: the SF anthology Andromeda (Andromeda Pub- and autobiographical elements inherited from under- lications, 1977–79) and, in 1978, Dave Sim’s series ground comix. Yet, because the direct market con- Cerebus (self-published under the Aardvark-Vanaheim tinues to blend the two, drawing any hard distinction imprint). Most of these comics were inexpensively between them is difficult (notwithstanding the fierce produced in black and white, and all offered variants position-taking of some fans). on traditional genres: science fiction, adventure, sword The development in the 1980s of both “independ- and sorcery, superheroics. These were the comic books ent” and “alternative” positions owed much to the that confirmed the efficacy of direct-only publishing support of a growing fandom. The alternative comix of and paved the way for the next host of independent the eighties, despite their disdain for the mainstream publications. and their invocation of the underground as fore- Among the third wave were such seminal takeoffs bears, were also indebted to a spate of fan-oriented, of genre as Howard Chaykin’s satirical SF series “ground-level” comic books of the mid-seventies, so American Flagg! (First Comics, 1983–89) and Dean called because they attempted to reconcile under- Motter et al.’s retro-futuristic Mister X (original series: ground and mainstream attitudes. Such ground-level Vortex, 1984–88). (Motter’s Mister X collaborators comics, though rooted in shopworn fantasy genres, originally included the Hernandez brothers of Love & testified to the influence of the undergrounds and Rockets fame, to be discussed in chapter 3.) These represented a first, tentative turning toward more books, more graphically elaborate than their predeces- personal and innovative approaches. Among these sors, were among many influenced by the newsstand quixotic publications were fantasy-adventure comics success of Heavy Metal, the slick “magazine of adult like Jack Katz’s The First Kingdom (published by illustrated fantasy” launched in 1977. Heavy Metal Comics & Comix/Bud Plant, 1974–86) and Star*Reach was adapted under license from the groundbreaking (published by Mike Friedrich’s Star*Reach Produc- French series Métal Hurlant (1975–87), itself inspired tions, 1974–79). Such projects, marked by their use by the free-spiritedness of the American under- of mainstream comic book talent, appealed to main- grounds and known for extravagant, visionary artwork stream readers while boasting an underground ration- (Gravett, “Euro-Comics” 83; Sabin, Adult Comics ale and modus operandi. As they negotiated the new 71–72). On a smaller scale, comic books like Flagg! and as yet uncertain territory of the direct market, and Mister X aimed for a similar graphic panache. they in turn inspired comics that took the direct mar- They boasted dazzling design conceits incorporating ket for granted, published by new companies specially architecture, fashion, and typography and were awash created for its unique conditions—companies like in eye-catching technique, expressive color, and

26 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS improved production values in general. More impor- Bell) Canada’s “greatest achievement in comic art” tant, they moved toward adult themes (again like (Canuck Comics 40). In the process Sim became the Heavy Metal), more so than even the most eccentric ipso facto spokesman of a self-publishers’ move- mainstream comics of the day, and confirmed that ment and of the direct market more generally. familiar market genres could be put to the service of Cerebus, a longtime staple of direct-only comic satirical and thought-provoking stories. These direct- books, stands as a signal example of the medium’s only comic books thus fulfilled the promise of the ear- creative growth under direct market conditions. Long liest “ground-level” efforts. Some offered a breadth promoted as a 300-issue “limited series” designed to and complexity unprecedented in serialized comics, span a quarter century of its creator’s life (the final even as they sought solutions for the creative and eco- issue appeared in Spring 2004), Cerebus cleaved nomic problems caused by dependence on a serial strictly to the traditional comic book format and a readership. monthly schedule, yet amassed one phonebook-sized Dave Sim’s self-published series Cerebus compilation after another. These “phonebooks,” with (1978–2004) serves as an especially clear example of their extended plots and satirical themes, demonstrate genre material blossoming in unexpected directions; that genre comic books can become vehicles for it also demonstrates clearly the possibilities and extended cultural argument and that, given an ongo- problems engendered by the direct market. Indeed ing project like Cerebus, talented artists can success- Cerebus is the ur-example of “independent” comics, fully publish and republish their own work over the informed by the underground’s uncompromising long term. As such, these volumes represent one of stance on intellectual ownership yet disciplined by the seminal examples of “independent” comics within the publishing practices of the commercial main- the direct market (a market that Sim has assiduously stream. Launched in 1978 (dated Dec. 1977/Jan. studied and promoted). Yet the curious achievement 1978), Cerebus began as a slavish homage to/spoof of Cerebus represents not only the potential but also of “sword and sorcery” fantasy, as popularized by the limitations inherent within comic shop culture. Marvel’s adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s pulp hero Because of Sim’s indebtedness to that culture, his ener- Conan; in fact Sim swiped some images directly from getic riffing on topics familiar only to hobbyists, and the early issues of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian his inattention to editing at the compiling stage, his (drawn by Barry Smith). Yet within a few years books are at best problematic examples of the “graphic Sim transformed Cerebus into a roving, uncategoriz- novel.” able and at times controversial vehicle for his ever- To be fair, the strongest satirical episodes in expanding interests in literature, religion, politics, Cerebus (for example, the political maneuverings in and gender. As its visual canvas grew ever richer the novel High Society) draw enlightening analogies (thanks in part to the arrival of Sim’s artistic collabo- between the seemingly parochial concerns of comic rator/background artist, the single-named Gerhard), book fans and broader sociopolitical conflicts. Yet it Cerebus evolved fitfully into a protean mix of epic is hard to imagine the uninitiated reader chuckling fantasy, psychological drama, genre parody, and with glee over, for example, the dated broadsides polemical treatise. The series grew to the point that against Marvel Comics that complicate the plot of it could embrace almost anything: electoral politics, Sim’s Church and State, or the continual teasing of apocalyptic visions, fictionalized lives of Oscar Wilde the monthly audience that interrupts and indeed and Ernest Hemingway, the dreamlife of its title arrests the narrative of Sim’s Reads. By the author’s character (a very human “aardvark”), and Sim’s own admission, the Cerebus series was as much increasingly antifeminist and politically conservative about a process as about an end product (Interview fulminations on the contemporary scene. Whatever 102–6), and its roots in serial publication complicated, it was, Cerebus was smart and ambitious, enough so at times undermined, its efforts toward novel-like that many came to regard it as (in the words of John coherence.

27 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS

Cerebus thus represents an ambitious yet uneasy testimonial to its own process, revealing Sim’s atti- compromise between serial and novelistic aesthetics. tude toward the grueling demands, and personal Though the series’ unruly accumulative quality rewards, of periodic self-publishing. (To this reader accounts for much of its appeal, the critical reputation the series became increasingly oppressive in its later of Cerebus rests on its breakdown into discrete, novel- years, as its content became more nakedly autobio- length stories, and, finally, on its claims to wholeness: graphical.) In short, Cerebus was, and remains, a for years Sim marketed the series by counting down product of the direct market, and its greatest appeal toward its promised end, issue 300, and recent cover- is to comic book fans. age of its ending has emphasized the complete and Like Cerebus, most of the works discussed in the rounded-off nature of Sim’s achievement. In fact Sim following chapters sprang from serial publication, and promoted Cerebus via a two-pronged attack: the pro- in some cases they too began as novel twists on famil- motion of the monthly as a limited, hence collectible, iar genre material. Gilbert Hernandez, studied in series of objects; and the promotion of the collected chapter 3, developed his complex “Heartbreak Soup” bookshelf editions as “finished” novels (despite the series from 1983 onwards through the periodic issues absence of substantial revision in these winding, often of Love & Rockets (which, though magazine-sized, self-indulgent volumes). This dual emphasis accom- was still supported by a loyal comic book audience). modated the habits of comic book hobbyists while His early stories in Love & Rockets, and even on occa- aiming toward a single, monumental saga. The tension sion his later work, show the formative influence of thus created is evident in such stories as the two-vol- genre comics, often filtered through a satiric sensibil- ume Church and State (1983–88), which finds Sim ity: superheroes and monsters battle; voluptuous switching restively from acute satire to broad farce, women and well-muscled men pose and cavort; flying from deliberate plotting to abrupt parodic episodes saucers and rockets sometimes buzz overhead. Yet, as that invoke superheroes and other comic book clichés. Hernandez’s work grew more confident, such ele- Though promoted as a single epic tale, Cerebus ments were relegated to the background, and in time reveled in being a comic book series, and indeed is “Heartbreak Soup,” a quintessential example of alter- most remarkable as an artifact of monthly publica- native comics, would generate a cycle of magic-realist tion. Its accumulated issues stand as the de facto short stories and novels that stand as some of the journal of an industry veteran, known for his engage- most provocative work in contemporary literature. ment with industry-wide economic concerns, his Crucial to this growth was Hernandez’s invocation of advocacy of independently owned and created work, underground comix, vintage newspaper strips, and and, increasingly, his broadsides against feminism, other points of reference, including film, canonical art, Marxism, and other political targets. Sim’s essays, and, increasingly, his own heritage and social position speeches and notes, published in Cerebus alongside as a Latino—all this in contrast to the mainstream the main narrative, constitute a vital part of his ethos comic book aesthetic invoked by Cerebus. as a comics professional. (In fannish conversation, Like Sim, Hernandez started within generic bounds “Dave Sim” is seldom simply a comic book author; that he then tested. Unlike Sim, he gravitated toward he represents either a standard-bearer for artistic an alternative aesthetic born of underground comix— freedom, or a venomous crank, or both.) In fact Sim’s in contrast to the “mainstream” approach of Cerebus, attachment to the direct market, and to the relative which favored an indefinitely sustained, strictly peri- freedom it offers the small press, became the concep- odical structure and an emphasis on comic book in- tual bedrock of Cerebus, so much so that at certain joking (and, graphically, a classically illustrative style, points the series devolved into a roman à clef about notwithstanding Sim’s penchant for caricature). Of the comic book industry. Sim’s commitment to a tra- course we should not exaggerate these differences: ditional format and schedule was such an overriding both of these artists belong to the same relatively concern that Cerebus often became a highly fraught small industry, and in fact Hernandez has recently

28 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS done much work in mainstream comics (far different book publishing industry, as formerly newsstand- from his fully personal work). More to the point, both dependent publishers redirected their product to owed their early opportunities for growth to the direct appeal more specifically to the direct market audi- market. Unlike Sim, however, artists like Hernandez ence. That audience was increasingly self-conscious, have pursued sporadic rather than monthly publica- relatively affluent, and eager for belated recognition tion—a testament to the influence of the under- of the comic book as “art,” a hunger that made the grounds—and are allied with publishers who have upscale format of the graphic novel doubly attractive. sought wider distribution outside the hobby. For all that the graphic novel provided a new plat- Sim’s work has been the more amenable to the form for alternative comics, it also became a kind of hobby’s traditional emphases on strict periodicity and wish-fulfilling totem for mainstream comics. continuity: arguably, the monthly Cerebus succeeded Critics have lamented the vagueness of the term. in being a “comic book” in ways that Love & Rockets Writing in 1988, Robert Fiore objected to “graphic has not. Yet Cerebus is also more insular: though its novel” as a kind of semantic sleight-of-hand, designed stands as a pioneering example of extended comic to confer “unearned status” on comics that differ little book narrative, and thus represents the flowering of from the standard output of mainstream comic book the medium under the aegis of direct sales, the terms publishers (Groth and Fiore 5). Indeed, the term of its success have thus far made it resistant to a wider quickly became a way of simply designating a format, critical appreciation. The ever-shifting and at times any format, with more heft than a standard comic digressive nature of Sim’s work suggests that there is book (Harvey, Comic Book 116). Marvel Comics and something left behind when a strictly periodical series DC Comics, the leading publishers of traditional is reformatted as a “graphic novel.” That “some- adventure fare, adopted the term to denote albums thing,” perhaps, is the comic book’s investment in of unusual length (forty-eight pages or more), being a comic book, and the vitality of the series qua though those books typically offered a reading expe- series. This is a tension faced by most of the long-form rience that fell well short of the novel, or even comics to be studied in the following chapters (includ- the literary short story, in terms of length and coming Hernandez’s). plexity. Granted, some early superhero “graphic novels” offered thematic elements that seldom made it into monthly comic books in such explicit WHENCE CAME THE GRAPHIC NOVEL? form, but these books were relatively brief and continued to work in the hyperbolic idiom of the genre. The above discussion raises a tough question: given They were scarcely “novels” in any sense that some- the difficulty of serializing novels in comic book form, one approaching them from outside the comics how did the idea of the graphic novel catch on? industry might recognize. Given the haphazard use This admittedly problematic term was popularized of the term (even Eisner’s seminal Contract was in in the late 1970s by veteran cartoonist Will Eisner in fact a collection of short stories), Fiore’s objection an effort to attract a new audience to his book- would seem reasonable. By now, however, the idea length projects, beginning with A Contract with God of the “graphic novel” has such force that we ignore (1978).10 The term originally promised a way of pro- the term at our peril (again, the currency of the term moting serious comics to the general book trade and makes it irresistible). a general readership: Eisner’s aim was to break into When did the idea of the “graphic novel” move bookstores, not comic shops. Yet, ironically, Eisner’s beyond comic shops and into the book trade? That term would eventually serve to legitimize a new, intervention came not with Eisner’s pioneering efforts costlier way of selling comics to the initiated direct but with the arrival in the late 1980s of several truly market fan. By the mid-eighties, the phrase “graphic novel-length volumes that had originally been serial- novel” had become common currency in the comic ized: specifically, the first volume of Spiegelman’s

29 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS

Maus (1986); Frank Miller’s darkly satiric superhero specialized conditions. While the label graphic novel is adventure The Dark Knight Returns, starring vigilante by now used routinely in the less specialized (and less hero Batman (also 1986); and Alan Moore and Dave forgiving) book trade, it was the comic book shop that Gibbons’s magisterial deconstruction of the super- gave the genre its economic spark. The direct market, hero, Watchmen (1987). All three of these had because of its low-risk terms, prompted the develop- depended to some extent on serialization among ment of increasingly ambitious comics narratives comic book fans to underwrite their production; all (albeit still mostly within the constraints of serial form). had been parceled out in periodic form prior to col- Though the late 1990s saw a creative retrenchment, lection and republication as volumes for the book in response to economic crises within the industry, trade. Yet Maus, first serialized in Raw, was the odd for a time the comic book market offered conditions one out: the one least dependent on the direct mar- encouraging to the creation of innovative work—and, ket for its survival, and least reducible to comic book in chastened and diminished form, it continues to do genres (though it invoked the anthropomorphic so, even as its most progressive publishers bid for “funny animal” tradition to alarming effect). In con- attention in the larger book trade. The changes trast, the comic book-derived Dark Knight and enabled by the direct market have so altered the Watchmen were smash hits within the direct market, perception of comics that the form has at last won teasing loyal superhero readers with each new install- commercial and critical attention as an emerging lit- ment and each new revisionist spin on the familiar erature. Alternative comic books and graphic novels genre. Together these three volumes—really not very are at the core of this development. much alike—established a beachhead for “graphic novels” in the book trade and indeed expectations of success that for years went spectacularly unfulfilled ALTERNATIVE COMICS ON THE CURRENT SCENE (see Sabin, Adult 110–15, 245–48; DeHaven, “Comics”). In the wake of the graphic novel, today’s direct mar- Since then “graphic novel” has become not only a ket presents a bewildering clash of perspectives. On term of convenience within comic book fandom but the one hand, major corporate publishers continue to also a label increasingly used by booksellers to exploit established properties through aggressively bracket a dizzying range of disparate comics: from marketed, upscale comic books (for example, the compilations of popular superhero comic book sto- number of new Batman- or Spider-Man-related items ries, to translated volumes of Japanese manga, to the in a given month can be overwhelming). On the rare original graphic novel designed for a non-fan other, alternative publishers and creators continue to audience. Such works tend to be lumped together invoke the iconoclastic spirit and methods of under- indiscriminately. Given the preponderance of super- ground comix, though they depend on the health of hero and fantasy stories in comic books, the “Graphic mainstream comics to keep the market afloat. These Novel” section in bookstores often ends up next to alternative comics-makers are caught in a bind: even Science Fiction, Horror, or other presumably related as they struggle to cross over from comic shops to the genre sections, though many comics (for example, larger possibilities of the book trade, they owe their Spiegelman’s) look wildly out of place in such con- continued livelihood to the direct market, which offers texts. But the format has at least gained a secure reassurances in terms of economic predictability and foothold within the book trade: graphic novels, low risk. Because alternative comics de-emphasize despite the relative thinning of the comic book mar- heroic fantasy (the market’s bedrock genre), they are ket, have at last become a recognizable commodity unfortunately marginalized even within the marginal within bookstores. field of comic book fandom. By that field’s peculiar Nonetheless the genre is an offspring of the comic standards, their core readership is considered highly book industry and owes its life to the direct market’s specialized. The position of alternative comics is

30 THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS therefore fragile—though they continue to serve (since 2000 a period of readjustment and consolida- mainstream comics both practically, as a seedbed for tion seems to have set in). Most encouraging, how- new talent, and rhetorically, even ideologically, as an ever, is that graphic novels are now pouring out of the abiding and convenient Other. direct market and into general bookstores, thanks to a The clash of perspectives within the direct market revival of interest among book publishers (as well as has been pronounced since the aggressive entry of recent partnerships between direct market companies Marvel and DC into direct-only publishing in the early and major book publishing/distributing houses). This 1980s. This clash has encouraged the persistent use of influx of comics into bookstores offers some publish- those admittedly imprecise and loaded terms, “main- ers and creators a real, if risky, alternative to depend- stream” and “alternative,” to distinguish between the ence on fandom. various types of comics vying for fans’ attention. Today much of the creative promise of American While the origins of these terms are contestable, their comic art rests in the undercapitalized and therefore continued relevance testifies to the field’s unruliness: fragile microcosm of alternative comics. In fact, the insular as it is, this market is crowded with different creative heart of contemporary English-language kinds of comics. Though mainstream superhero comics comics can be found in the genres of the alternative are the economic lifeblood for most direct market comic book and graphic novel: heirs to the under- shops, alternative comics persist in challenging this ground, born of the direct market’s unique subculture state of affairs—hence the continuing reinforcement, and yet anxious to reach a wider, less insular audi- the reification, of these contrasting terms. The chal- ence. Such alternative comics have most forcefully lenge of alternative comics extends not only to style demonstrated the complexity and potential of the art and thematic content but also, increasingly, to format, form; along the way, they have forged the strongest packaging, and frequency—a testament to the influ- connections with avant-garde and art comics world- ence of the underground. wide. From alternative comics has come a dramatic Comic shops may have reached a ceiling on their influx of work that challenges both the formal and growth, not only because the direct market system cultural boundaries of comic art. While we should not poses disadvantages to retailers but also perhaps make the mistake of simply dismissing strips or comic because comic book fandom is a generational phe- books based in mainstream market genres—they nomenon suffering from a lack of turnover. Certainly, have been and remain crucial to the growth of the art, faith in the commercial and artistic potential of comic as the above history attests—it is alternative comics books was hobbled in the late nineties by a traumatic that have most compellingly extended, revitalized, decline from the boom years, pre-1993. Happily, and indeed redefined the form. Such alternative work though, optimism is in the air as of this writing, for the will be this book’s main focus, as we study productive direct market has pulled well back from the brink tensions, and recent innovations, within comics.

31 CHAPTERCHAPTER TWO 1

AN ART OF TENSIONS

THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING

Of course we can now reach multitudes of children and semi-illiterate adults with images rather than with cultivated language. But should we? Any degradation of language is a potential threat to civilization. —Fredric Wertham, “Comics in Education”

I’ve been writing all along and I’ve been doing it with pictures. —Jack Kirby, Interview with Ben Schwartz

To posit comics as a literary form—and alternative comics in particular as a wellspring of notable literary work—may seem question-begging, given the traditional critical view of comics as a subliterary and juvenile diversion that anticipates or preempts the experience of “real” reading. Despite the recent groundswell in multidisciplinary word/image studies, this damaging view of comics is still alive and kicking in some quarters, where classist concerns about the cultural provenance of comics are reinforced by assumptions about essential “differences” between communication by text and communication by images. When doubts persist about the terms of readerly engagement with comics, and whether those terms are radically at odds with the teaching of traditional textual literacy, claims about the form’s literary potential are bound to stir skepticism and resistance. Such doubts of course cannot be overborne by assertion, nor even by sheer weight of example—not everyone can be per- suaded—but in the interest of clearing the air, it is worth asking, What kind of experience is reading comics? And to what extent does that experience resem- ble or diverge from the experience of reading traditional written text? How, if

32 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING at all, might that experience affect the acquisition of invocation of intimacy and writing is no mere after- print awareness and literacy? thought: though he seems unconcerned about the These questions, though often unstated or taken materiality of comics (that is, their physical construc- as already answered, have bedeviled professional tion as printed objects), McCloud clearly is concerned research since at least the 1940s and need to be about their readability. Therefore he privileges their addressed if we are to appreciate comics as a literary static nature—more precisely, the way they exploit the form. They are not the sort of questions one conven- “juxtaposition” of still images. These are images that tionally asks about visual art, but they are crucial to stay, unlike the successive moments in a film or video ask here, for they bear directly on the claim—my as it is being viewed. In that sense the images in comics bedrock claim—that comic art is a form of writing. read more like printed words or characters. A similar This claim has increasingly found support among emphasis informs other recent formalist studies (e.g., critics, as a reaction against the comparison of comics Harvey’s Art of the Comic Book, Eisner’s Graphic to cinema and other mechanically paced, hence com- Storytelling), which, along with McCloud, suggest a paratively “passive,” forms of visual communication. general critique of cinema as an explanatory template Comics, in recent criticism, are not mere visual displays for comics. that encourage inert spectatorship but rather texts that Yet it is by no means clear that comics are univer- require a reader’s active engagement and collaboration sally regarded as a reading experience. Indeed, the in making meaning. Hence Will Eisner’s critique of recent insistence on comics-as-reading seems designed comics that too slavishly imitate the rapid pacing and to counter a long-lived tradition of professional writing narrative fragmentation of cinema (Graphic Story- that links comics with illiteracy and the abdication of telling 70–73) and Scott McCloud’s insistence that the reading as a civilized (and civilizing) skill. This “anti- reader is always the author’s active “accomplice” in comics” tradition, or school, clearly gives vent to constructing the meaning of a comics text (68). From assumptions and anxieties about literacy acquisition invoking cinema as an upscale, hence flattering, anal- among the very young (concerns shared with much ogy, comics scholars have decisively shifted toward popular and professional writing about children’s liter- recognizing the specificity of comics as a form, one dis- ature). In fact anxiety over comics as an influence on tinguished from cinema by its own signifying codes reading, or as “competition” for real reading, domi- and practices. nates the earliest professional writing about the form. Comics theory, then, has tardily arrived at a crucial The first wave of American academic research about stage, that of dismantling the once-useful cinema/ comics, from the 1940s to the mid-1950s, focused comics analogy.1 The idea of comics as active reading persistently on reading skills, reading habits and literacy has gained ground in critical conversation, and dis- acquisition (McAllister, “Research” 6–11; Nyberg 8–11; placed the once-attractive comparison to film. This see also Lent, Comic Strips, and Zorbaugh). This critical shift is politically loaded, of course, underplaying the wave resulted from the sudden popularity, indeed complexity of audience participation in cinema (how ubiquity, of comic books as juvenile entertainment, do viewers read a film, anyway?) so as to stress the from the late thirties onward (though newspaper strips difference of comics—a strategy consistent with raised similar alarms in the popular press decades what Bart Beaty has called “the search for comics before—see, for example, Lent, Pulp Demons 9–10; exceptionalism” (“Exceptionalism” 67). Crucial to Gordon, Comic Strips 41– 42). this search is the (re)invocation of the written text as Mirroring popular concerns, the first wave of comic a more appropriate point of comparison. book research stressed the challenge comics posed to Hence McCloud’s grand summation in Under- school curricula and to traditional notions of literature standing Comics: the form “offers range and versatility (both as reading matter and as a sacrosanct cultural with all the potential imagery of film and painting plus patrimony). The field was shared by clinicians, sociolo- the intimacy of the written word” (212). McCloud’s gists, and educators, but it was the latter, especially

33 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING librarians and English teachers, who dominated the dis- pejorative: the “pictures” are held to be a detriment cussion. Common among their writings were: concerns because they encourage a “lazy” or passive approach about the damage (optical as well as psychological) to reading. This position assumes that the verbal supposedly wrought by comics; invidious distinctions aspects of the hybrid text are of no consequence to the between the entrenched newspaper strip genre and the (presumably semi-literate) readers, who concentrate then less familiar, and certainly less reputable, comic wholly on the pictures. book; assumptions about the otherness of comics vis- This argument is distilled in Fredric Wertham’s à-vis true art and culture (which were assumed to be famed Seduction of the Innocent (1954), which, nutritive and socially unifying); and specific sugges- besides asserting a causal connection between comics tions of books that could serve as “substitutes” for, or consumption and delinquency, also devotes a chapter alternatives to, comic book reading. to the impact of comics on reading skill. Wertham Because comic books were overwhelmingly associ- concludes that comics discourage or obstruct reading ated with children, these first attempts to theorize readiness, that they cause or exacerbate “reading dis- about comics reading were inevitably urgent and orders,” and that most habitual comics readers are instrumental in nature. Disinterest was impossible: not “reading” at all but rather engaging in a lazier academic and popular commentators alike (some activity which he christens “picture reading,” mean- served in both capacities) were spurred by the general ing “gazing at the successive pictures of the comic controversy surrounding the medium. Popular and book with a minimal reading of printed letters” (126, academic conversations about comic books necessar- 139). In Wertham’s view, the ease of comics-gazing ily overlapped and reinforced each other, and some of “seduces” children into mere picture reading, drawing the most concerned parties—teachers and clinicians, them away from the more valuable activity of decod- for instance—were positioned so that they had no ing written text. Wertham would later coin the phrase choice but to respond to arguments from all sides. “linear dyslexia” to describe the “inability to sustain Thus the early academic writings about comics were proper reading of whole lines . . . and of whole transparently political, part of a continuum of political pages” that he believed followed inevitably from such activity that included professional symposia, public extensive picture reading. He would also attack testimony, newspaper op-ed writing, mass book comics’ visual/verbal nature by explicitly connecting burnings, and the drafting of new laws. Because they written literacy with cultural inheritance, thusly: “[I]t were occasional in nature, most of these writings have took thousands of years to develop from communica- dated badly. Yet, remote as they are, they represent tion by images to the abstract reading and writing the first kindling of academic interest in comic art. process which is one of the foundations of civiliza- They should not be dismissed offhandedly, for they tion. . . . Any degradation of language is a potential had lasting effects, both on the political treatment of threat . . .” (“Comics and Education” 19–20). the comic book medium and on the academic attitude This view, so forcefully articulated by Wertham, toward comics as a form of writing and reading. still colors discussion of comics in the literary sphere, A full survey of this literature lies beyond our scope where, as Adam Gopnik has pointed out, comics con- (therefore readers are referred to Amy Nyberg’s Seal of tinue to be regarded as an atavistic, indeed primitive Approval and John Lent et al.’s Pulp Demons for help- and preliterate, form, despite evidence to the contrary ful overviews). Suffice to say that most academic stud- (“Comics and Catastrophe” 29–30). Cartoonists’ ies from this period neglect to consider the appeal of penchant for using nonstandard or distorted vocabu- the comics form per se, and conceive of it as, at best, a lary, phrasing, and spelling—a habit that depends on neutral or valueless carrier of themes and ideas better the power of pictures to gloss and clarify—has often expressed in traditional books. While some writings of been adduced as evidence of this preliterate quality, the period do acknowledge the hybrid, visual/verbal though it arguably reveals quite the opposite: a makeup of comics, this acknowledgment is usually sophisticated attitude toward language as a sign of

34 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING character and context. Although Wertham derided comic art and share a common argument: the famil- the “faulty” spelling and peculiar “neologisms” of iarity, accessibility and, in some cases, easy vocabulary comics, as well as their reliance on “words that are not of comics make them ideal tools for teaching reading, words at all,” that is, onomatopoeia (Seduction 144), provided that teachers “focus the students’ attention prior arguments had already established that word on the words, not the pictures” (Thomas 258). distortion in comics can be a source of meaning, and Comics are held to have a high “motivational value” pleasure, for adult and child readers alike (see Hill (161), and articles extolling comics often invoke the 525). Indeed, the playful argot of such comics as popularity of the form, in some cases buttressing this George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and Elzie Segar’s Popeye claim with sales figures for comic books. Yet recogni- marks a Modernist preoccupation with the fluid tion of the unique properties of comics is scant. These exchange between poetic and everyday speech—no studies tend to ignore the distinctive graphic qualities less so, one is tempted to say, than Finnegan’s Wake. of the comics page in favor of an emphasis on verbal Concern over such “degradation” of language con- “readability” alone, and recommend classroom activ- tinues to obstruct the critical reception of comics, even ities that focus on the isolation of key words or though, properly speaking, this anarchic approach to the analysis of prose, without attention to the visual words should be seen as a creative asset rather than a context.2 liability. (As a student of mine once remarked, “I love Thomas’s book confirmed a change in the prevail- the way the pictures make the dialogue so free.”) ing attitude toward comics reading. This change can Academic critics of comics throughout the forties be traced to various overdetermined, indeed politically and fifties tended to ignore or to condemn the form’s fraught, trends in American intellectual life, among visual/verbal nature, viewing the radical fragmentation them: shifts in academic attitudes toward mass cul- of the page and the nonstandard use of language as ture, the displacement of media effects research from obstructive rather than enabling. Yet by the early sev- comics to television, and the entrenchment of holistic enties the overall emphasis of the professional litera- or “whole language” approaches to reading peda- ture had begun to shift, from censure to guarded gogy. These trends conspired to quell anxieties about endorsement of comics as an aid to literacy. Indeed the comics, and indeed to encourage the use of comics seventies saw a groundswell of interest in comics as and other hybrid texts in reading instruction. Yet, still, instructional tools, a development summed up in 1983 the distinctiveness of comic art—its peculiar means of with the appearance of a book titled Cartoons and soliciting reader involvement and suggesting mean- Comics in the Classroom, edited by James L. Thomas. ing—seldom came up for discussion. There remained This book, subtitled A Reference for Teachers and an underlying consistency between the censorious Librarians, compiles thirty-two articles written by aca- writings of the forties and fifties and the guarded demics, school administrators, classroom teachers, and enthusiasm of the seventies and eighties. This consis- librarians between 1971 and 1981, articles culled from tency emerges repeatedly in certain rhetorical conces- journals and magazines aimed primarily at educators sions: comics are designated as strictly utilitarian and (for example, Elementary English, School Library are still regarded as distinctly other than “great litera- Journal, and Reading Improvement). Thomas’s compi- ture.” Yes, they are a time-honored part of American lation urges the use of comics and instructional car- culture, and possibly an aid to reading, but as texts toons, while inadvertently testifying to the cultural they are too impure, or too aesthetically fragile, to anxieties still surrounding the form: several articles defend except on grounds of usefulness. Scholarship refer approvingly to the comic industry’s self-censoring continued to resist comics and, more broadly, the com- Code, and the full text of the Code is given as an mixing of image and text, except as a stopgap for the appendix. “reluctant” reader. Articles of the sort collected in Cartoons and Comics In sum, the professional literature reveals two in the Classroom register a tentative enthusiasm for schools of thought about comics reading, both

35 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING founded on pragmatic concerns: either comics are empirical study (for example, eye movement, work- effective aids to literacy, because they are “easy”; or ing memory, or graphophonic competence). My aim comics are poor aids, perhaps even obstacles, to liter- is not to set forth an empirical model of comics read- acy, because they are “easy.” Comics, in short, are ing but rather to establish the complexity of the form either useful as stepping-stones or worse than useless. by broadly discussing the kinds of mixed messages it What both schools neglect is the specificity of the sends even to the most experienced of readers. This comics reading experience. Though comics may assist discussion will serve as a prospectus for the collective the acquisition of print literacy, they are by no means task of theorizing reader response in comics in a interchangeable with conventional reading; on this more general way. score the critics of comics as an instructional medium Such theorizing, I will argue, must grapple with have a point. Yet these detractors err in assuming that four tensions that are fundamental to the art form: the form impedes literacy acquisition because of its between codes of signification; between the single simplicity. Rather, we should say that comics are of image and the image-in-series; between narrative only particular and limited use as reading aids because sequence and page surface; and, more broadly, of their complexity. between reading-as-experience and the text as mate- Comics raise many questions about reading and its rial object. To demonstrate these tensions, I will draw effects, yet the persistent claims for the form’s simplic- on a range of examples, including alternative and ity and transparency make it impossible to address mainstream, children’s and adults’, and European and these questions productively. Criticism, whether for- American comics. malist or sociocultural in emphasis, will remain at an impasse as long as comics are seen this way—that is, as long as they are rhetorically constructed as “easy.” 1. CODE VS. CODE (“WORD” VS. “IMAGE”) In fact comics can be a complex means of communication and are always characterized by a plurality of mes- Definitions of comics commonly (though not univer- sages. They are heterogeneous in form, involving the sally) depend on the co-presence and interplay of co-presence and interaction of various codes. To the image and written text. Some critics regard this inter- already daunting (and controversial) issue of reading, play as a clash of opposites: the image’s transparency then, we must add several new complexities, if we are versus the written text’s complexity. McCloud, for to understand what happens when we read comics. instance, though his own definition deemphasizes From a reader’s viewpoint, comics would seem to words, insists on this contrast: he speaks of pictures be radically fragmented and unstable. I submit that as received information, in contrast to words, whose this is their great strength: comic art is composed of meanings must be perceived (49). Such a distinction several kinds of tension, in which various ways of posits a struggle between passive and active experi- reading—various interpretive options and potentiali- ence, that is, between inert spectatorship and com- ties—must be played against each other. If this is so, mitted reading. By this argument, comics depend on then comics readers must call upon different reading a dialectic between what is easily understood and strategies, or interpretive schema, than they would what is less easily understood; pictures are open, use in their reading of conventional written text. easy, and solicitous, while words are coded, abstract, The balance of this chapter will engage the fun- and remote. damental tensions within comics, with emphasis on Yet in comics word and image approach each other: the kinds of judgment (or suspension of judgment) words can be visually inflected, reading as pictures, they demand of readers. I shall concentrate on ques- while pictures can become as abstract and sym- tions of reader response, in the sense of participation bolic as words. In brief, the written text can function and interpretation, rather than those underlying like images, and images like written text. Comics, questions of reading process that properly belong to like other hybrid texts, collapse the word/image

36 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING dichotomy: visible language has the potential to be narratives throughout, never quite reconciling one to quite elaborate in appearance, forcing recognition of the other (figs. 5 and 6). In fact “I Guess” [a.k.a. pictorial and material qualities that can be freighted “Thrilling Adventure Stories”] seems to tell two dif- with meaning (as in, for example, concrete poetry); ferent tales. Its visuals pay homage to traditional conversely, images can be simplified and codified to superhero stories, in a slickly parodic style inspired by function as a language (see Kannenberg, “Graphic the 1930s and 1940s work of such artists as Joe Text” and especially “Chris Ware”). McCloud himself Shuster (Superman) and C. C. Beck (Captain Marvel); notes this, arguing for comic art in which word and its written text, on the other hand, consists of an image tend toward each other (47–49, 147–51). This ostensibly autobiographical reminiscence, in which recognition renders McCloud’s larger argument inco- a narrator recalls unsettling childhood experiences. herent, as it belies his earlier distinction between per- Ware never subordinates one tale to the other, but ceived and received information. The distinction does instead juxtaposes word and image in suggestive not hold in any case, for, as Perry Nodelman points out counterpoint. The iconography of the superhero with regard to picture books, “All visual images, even genre informs and deepens the autobiographical the most apparently representational ones, . . . require narrative, while the autobiography invests the clichés a knowledge of learned competencies and cultural of the superhero with a peculiar resonance, inviting the assumptions before they can be rightly understood” reader to reconsider the genre’s psychological appeal. (17). Though the image is, as W. J. T. Mitchell says, Thus the interplay of the two suggests a third, more “the sign that pretends not to be a sign” (Iconology comprehensive meaning that the reader must con- 43), it remains a sign nonetheless, “as bound up with struct through inference. As Gene Kannenberg Jr. habit and convention as any text” (64). Pictures are argues, in a cogent and useful reading of Ware, not simply to be received; they must be decoded. this “third field of interpretation” captures the emo- Still, responding to comics often depends on recog- tional conflict within the narrator himself, effectively nizing word and image as two “different” types of sign, “reproduc[ing] a psychological state upon the page” whose implications can be played against each other— (“Ware” 185–86). to gloss, to illustrate, to contradict or complicate or Ware’s pictorial narrative, involving a conflict ironize the other. While the word/image dichotomy between a costumed superman and a mad scientist, may be false or oversimple, learned assumptions parodies early superhero comics with some care, distill- about these different codes—written and pictorial— ing many of the graphic and thematic hallmarks of the still exert a strong centripetal pull on the reading genre in its commercial heyday (its Golden Age, in fan experience. We continue to distinguish between the parlance). Yet his coolly postmodern graphics exagger- function of words and the function of images, despite ate the cartoon simplicity of Shuster and Beck; he flat- the fact that comics continually work to destabilize this tens the genre’s fervid romanticism into rigid poses, very distinction. This tension between codes is funda- embalming it. His meticulous rendering, lacking the mental to the art form. roughhewn spontaneity of early comic books, pushes the visuals immediately into parody. Arch and over- A CASE STUDY: WARE’S “I GUESS” determined, the drawings defer to, yet remain crucially different from, a long line of predecessors. Hence they If words can be drawn, and images written, then the provide a ripe and suggestive context for the words. tension between words and images can become In sharp contrast to the pictures, the written nar- quite complex. For example, in “I Guess” (Raw 2:3, ration of “I Guess” explores a child’s relationships 1991, reprinted in Ware, Quimby), alternative car- with three different males: his grandfather, his “best toonist Chris Ware experiments with a radically friend,” and his stepfather. The first-person narrator, disjunctive form of verbal/visual interplay: a six- rambling from one recollection to the next, speaks in a page story that sustains parallel verbal and pictorial sort of blank parataxis, as if unable to draw conclusions

37 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING from his own stories. His words, in their very blank- bewildering moments play with an ambiguity funda- ness and simplicity, evoke the naiveté of childhood mental to comics: the verbal text (as Eisner reminds us) just as deliberately as do Ware’s superhero visuals reads as an image, yet typically remains distinct from and capture the confusion of a child grappling with the narrative reality evoked by the drawings (Comics & such perplexing issues as racial and sexual identity. Sequential Art 10; see also Abbott 156). Though the For example: “he asked me if I felt weird that we appearance of the text can inflect our reading, we were the only boys at the party. I said no, and then I assume that the printed words as such are not part of asked him if he felt weird that we were the only the fictional world we are experiencing. Rather, they white kids at the party. He said no, and then he asked represent or cue “sounds” within that world, or in me why I said that. I really didn’t know and all of a some cases provide a gloss on that world, what might sudden I felt gross so I rolled over and pretended to be called a nondiegetic amplification or commentary. go to sleep” (78). Like the pictures, the words are Yet Ware destabilizes this convention by bringing essentially ironic: the narrator raises troubling ques- fragments of the written text into the depicted world tions but in a naive, unreflective way, thus cueing the of the story (that is, into the diegesis). To the extent reader to look further than the narrator himself can. that this technique undercuts the verisimilitude of that Ware’s deployment of words in “I Guess” is radi- world, it forces the reader to question actively the cally disorienting, for, in defiance of convention, he conventions of comic art. In stories that honor those weaves the written narrative freely, unpredictably, conventions, printed sound effects and narration through the pictorial, creating what Kannenberg calls remain distinct from street signs, billboards and other a “mutually reflective patterning” of verbal and visual objects bearing written messages within the diegesis; themes (183). Narration appears within the drawings, Ware, however, erases the distinction, thus disorient- not only in caption blocks, word balloons and thought ing the reader and encouraging critical awareness of balloons, but also in the guise of decorative titles, those conventions. (Such conventions are the very labels, sound effects, and even as parts of the diege- things that make it possible for readers to construct sis, that is, as signs within the superhero’s world itself. meaning from comic art’s plurality of codes.) Ware practices a curious sort of enjambment: visual The story’s intermixing of words and images breaks in the text (between captions, balloons, and so enriches the first-person narrative, hinting at levels of forth) do not match syntactic or logical breaks in the oedipal conflict and psychological confusion unac- narration. For instance, a sentence or clause may knowledged in the words alone. At the same time, begin in a caption and continue in a dialogue balloon. this verbal/visual tension compels the reader to con- Nor do changes in the relative size, shape, or bold- sider critically the psychological undercurrents of the ness of the lettering always correspond to dramatic superhero genre, as suggested by certain recurrent emphases in the narrated text. At times the visual character types and narrative tropes: the mad scien- emphasis seems comically inappropriate, as when, in tist, the imperiled woman, the hero’s dual identity, the opening “splash” panel (fig. 5), the equivocal the woman’s rescue, the hero’s gesture of mercy, the phrase “I GUESS” forms a bold masthead in giant let- villain’s convenient self-destruction. By mapping a ters, even as it starts a sentence that is completed in confused, childlike narration onto these generic ele- the caption underneath. Scraps of narration also ments, Ware casts new light on the genre’s structure appear as sound effects, as in the story’s climax, and appeal. where the highly fraught word “when” appears as an Admittedly, “I Guess” represents a radical ques- explosion: “I liked things better / WHEN / it was just tioning of the way comics work; few comics test the my mom and me, anyway” (fig. 6). limits of the form so rigorously. Yet, by destabilizing More radical still is Ware’s incorporation of the writ- the conventions of visual/verbal interplay, Ware’s ten narrative within the diegesis itself, in the form of six-page effort throws those conventions into relief, banners, signs, and other word-bearing objects. Such and encourages us to read even conventional comics

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Figure 5. Chris Ware, “I Guess.” Raw Vol. 2, No. 3, page 76. © 1990 Chris Ware. Used with permission. more attentively. Dismantling genre as well as form, Ware’s narrative strategy assumes a sophisticated Ware’s experiment demonstrates the potential of reader, one who recognizes highly fraught parodic comics to create challenging, multilayered texts: his gestures as such, and whose confusion can be turned simple, broadly representational drawings contribute to advantage. In sum, “I Guess” illustrates the interac- to, rather than mitigate, the suggestive complexity of tive nature of comics reading and the possibility of the narrative, while the blank, naive narratorial voice generating meaning through the manipulation of ten- both amplifies and undercuts the appeal of the draw- sions inherent in the reading experience. ings. Moreover, the constant tension between the two forces us to take heed of the role the reader must play PICTOGRAPHIC LANGUAGE: CODE VS. CODE in constructing meaning. For it is only at the level of the reader’s intervention that Ware’s words and images Yet the tension between picturing and writing can conjoin to suggest a meaning that subsumes both. can exceed even what Ware’s story offers. In fact

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Figure 6. Ware, “I Guess.” 81 (excerpt). © 1990 Chris Ware. Used with permission. comics can exploit this tension without incorporating (ironic, as these symbols allow the cartoonist’s work words per se, as the growing body of “mute” or itself to cross national and cultural borders).3 “pantomime” (that is, wordless) comics attests (see Such visual “dialogue” may be drawn in a different Groensteen, “La bande dessinée muette”). Such style than the pictures used to establish the diegesis: comics often rely on diagrammatic symbols, such as typically, they are less particular, or more generic. panels, speed or vector lines, and ideograms, to gloss Alternately, they may be of the very same style, just or reinforce what’s going on in the pictures (see, for enclosed within balloons like regular dialogue. In example, Fischer and Beronä). Nor does the “writ- François Avril and Philipe Petit-Roulet’s Soirs de Paris, ten” text within balloons or captions have to consist for example, the story “63 Rue de la Grange aux of words in a conventional sense. Indeed, in comics Belles” (fig. 8) uses elaborate pictograms to capture dialogue icons may take the place of words: the use the conversations taking place at a cocktail party. The of pictograms within balloons is a rich tradition, partygoers’ dialogue balloons contain a range of pic- recently explored by such cartoonists as Hendrik tures: from simple icons, as when a man asks a woman Dorgathen and Eric Cartier. For example, Cartier’s to dance; to cartoons in the same style as that used to Flip in Paradise and Mekong King, told in miniature depict the speakers (as when a would-be Romeo uses album format, use pictograms to suggest elaborate a series of balloons to itemize a woman’s attractive dialogues between the hapless picaro, Flip, and the features: her eyes, breasts, legs, and so on); to detailed inhabitants of the various lands he visits. swipes of images by such artists as Gaugain and In Flip in Paradise, for instance, as the hero hag- Matisse, which indicate the topics of conversation gles over the price of a joint, his dialogue devolves among a group of cultured wallflowers. Such examples into a cluster of visual non sequiturs—as if Flip is suggest that visual/verbal tension is not necessarily already beginning to succumb to the effects of dope even a matter of playing words against pictures; it may (fig. 7). At first the pictograms in the balloons sug- be a matter of playing symbols against other symbols. gest bargaining, with ever-decreasing amounts of Such visual/verbal tension results from the juxta- money, but as the balloons crowd together the dia- position of symbols that function diegetically and logue’s logic becomes harder and harder to grasp. symbols that function non-diegetically—that is, the Later in the same book a drunken Flip will teach a mingling of symbols that “show” and symbols that parrot some new words—all about killing and cook- “tell.” More precisely, we may say that symbols that ing the bird—as shown in a tête-à-tête in which man show are symbols that purport to depict, in a literal and bird spout the same pictograms. Cartier makes way, figures and objects in the imagined world of the ingenious use of such visual symbols to dramatize comic, while symbols that tell are those that offer a Flip’s struggles to communicate in strange lands kind of diacritical commentary on the images or (to

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Figure 7. Eric Cartier, Flip in Paradise (n. pag.). © Eric Cartier. Used with permission. use another rough metaphor) a “soundtrack” for the dubbed (borrowing from gestalt psychology) “clo- images. In most comics, the symbols that show are sure” by McCloud, in keeping with the reader- representational drawings while the symbols that tell response emphasis of his Understanding Comics. are words, balloons, and a few familiar icons. (These In fact “breakdown” and “closure” are complemen- icons are nonalphabetic symbols of a sort that many tary terms, both describing the relationship between word processors now make available to writers: sequence and series: the author’s task is to evoke arrows, dotted lines, lightbulbs, stars, and so forth.) an imagined sequence by creating a visual series (a But the potential exists for comics creators to push this breakdown), whereas the reader’s task is to translate tension much further, even to incorporate representa- the given series into a narrative sequence by achiev- tional drawings as “dialogue” (as in Cartier, and Avril ing closure. Again, the reader’s role is crucial, and and Petit-Roulet) and to blur the difference between requires the invocation of learned competencies; the alphabetic symbols and pictures. At its broadest relationships between pictures are a matter of con- level, then, what we call visual/verbal tension may vention, not inherent connectedness. be characterized as the clash and collaboration of dif- At times this process of connecting, or closure, ferent codes of signification, whether or not written seems straightforward and unproblematic, as when words are used. Again, the deployment of such strong visual repetition and/or verbal cueing make devices assumes a knowing reader. the connections between images immediate, or at least fairly obvious. For instance, Julie Doucet’s self- 2. SINGLE IMAGE VS. IMAGE-IN-SERIES referential vignette “The Artist” uses successive panels to capture the methodical, step-by-step provo- Most definitions of comics stress the representation cation of a striptease (fig. 9). This striptease implicates of time, that is, of temporal sequence, through mul- the spectator in an unnerving way, for the artist ends tiple images in series. The process of dividing a nar- by spilling her guts with a knife. The deliberate, incre- rative into such images—a process that necessarily mental advances of the sequence, from one panel entails omitting as well as including—can be called to the next, establish a rhythm and an expectation, (à la Robert C. Harvey) breakdown, a word derived and eventually this rhythm makes the unthinkable from “breakdowns,” a term of art that refers to the thinkable: the artist mutilates and literally opens her- rough drawings made in the process of planning out self before our eyes in calm, measured steps. This vio- a comics story (Art of the Funnies 14–15). The lent, self-destructive climax, accomplished through reverse process, that of reading through such images methodical breakdown, ultimately exceeds and beg- and inferring connections between them, has been gars all expectations. (The technique reappears in

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Figure 8. François Avril (drawings) & Philipe Petit- Roulet (scenario), “63 Rue de la Grange aux Belles” (selected panels). Soirs de Paris (n. pag.). © Les Humanoïdes Associés. Used by permission of Franc¸ois Avril and Philipe Petit-Roulet. other early Doucet stories, such as “Heavy Flow” frames the entire day from Esther’s point of view, and “A Blow Job,” with their gradual yet shocking sticking close to the minutiae of her clockwork rou- transformations.) tine. The repeated use of close-ups throughout the At other times, closure may require more active sequence reinforces the repetitive yet discontinuous effort on the part of the reader, as demonstrated nature of her work. repeatedly in Jason Lutes’s novel Jar of Fools. A quar- After showing the interior of the café, Lutes ter of the way into the novel, a two-page sequence builds the rest of the sequence around Esther’s (36–37) depicts a day’s work for Esther O’Dea, who query, “Can I help you?”—a phrase she mechani- serves customers at a coffee bar called the Saturn cally repeats throughout the day. One customer Café (fig. 10). In just twenty-four panels Lutes man- responds to this with a suggestive sneer and a verbal ages to evoke the tedium and sheer drudgery of come-on, “In more ways than one, sweetheart,” an seven hours on the job, showing both minute details overture which Esther repays with stony silence even and Esther’s overall attitude toward her work. The as she imagines belting the man with a left hook breakdown of the action is characterized by several (36). That she imagines this, but does not do it, is bold choices: for instance, Lutes challenges the rea- something the reader must figure out for herself: der by beginning from the inside out, with a close-up Lutes suggests this both by the unvarying rhythm of of Esther preparing a double espresso, rather than the sequence and by the subtle variation in panel from the outside in, with an establishing shot of the bordering around the imagined punch (the latter a café itself (here being introduced to readers for the technique used previously by Lutes to set off dreams first time). We see a larger image of the café interior and memories—by this point the reader presumably only after Esther hands the espresso to a customer, knows the code). Yet the moment comes as a shock and a shot of the exterior (specifying the location) nonetheless, due in part to the repeated use of a only in the middle of the sequence. Thus Lutes single, unvarying image—Esther’s taciturn face—to

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Figure 9. Julie Doucet, “The Artist.” Lève Ta Jambe Mon Poisson Est Mort! (n. pag.). © Julie Doucet. Used with permission. pace the sequence. We see her land a blow, yet interpolations of dream and fantasy into mundane nothing about her or around her changes to match reality, and so on—and take an active part in con- this unexpected outburst. The reader must negotiate structing a flow of events from discontinuous images. the larger context of Lutes’s narrative to make this At times achieving closure can be quite difficult, as key distinction. when images seem radically disjointed and verbal On the next page, as the hours crawl forward, cues are scant. For example, Art Spiegelman’s word- Lutes repeats the image of a clock—along with less “drawn over two weeks while on the phone” Esther’s “Can I help you?”—to suggest the slow, (from Raw No. 1, rpt. in Spiegelman and Mouly, frustrating passage of time. Verbal and visual repeti- Read Yourself Raw) presents a series of disconnected tion (the clock, the coffee cups, Esther’s face, Can I panels with recurrent character types and situations help you?) succeed in quickly evoking a sense of but no narrative per se. Generic conventions—nods boredom and restiveness—no mean feat. The to film noir, for instance—are repeatedly invoked but repeated close-up of the clock face, with changing without a linear rationale; motific repetition suggests times, finally gives way to the sight of Esther watch- at best a vague connection between otherwise dising the clock from an oblique angle, as her spoken junct panels. Certain characters and symbols are Can I help you? becomes an unspoken Can I kill repeated: geometric symbols, for instance, which you? (37). This is the moment when her shift ends, serve as pictographic dialogue, as decorative effects, finally, and she can leave the café. In just a few pan- and, in a droll reversal, even as characters. But the els, then, Lutes compresses a day’s work into a mon- sought-for “unity” of the piece, finally, rests on the tage of numbing, repetitive activity and emotional reader’s recognition of the author’s formal playful- frustration. To follow this sequence, the reader must ness rather than on any coherent narrative. It takes be mindful of Lutes’s previously established habits much knowledge and careful attention to read as a storyteller—his approach to panel bordering, his Spiegelman’s series as a sequence.

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Figure 10. Jason Lutes, Jar of Fools 36–37. © Jason Lutes. Used with permission.

The tension between single image and image- serves to structure an otherwise nonlinear barrage of in-series is bound up with other formal issues, and non sequiturs, visual gags, and stylistic swipes. therefore hard to codify. McCloud’s Understanding To some extent, then, the process of transition- Comics remains the strongest theoretical treatment ing, or closure, depends not only on the interplay (in English, that is) of comics sequencing; yet between successive images but also on the interplay McCloud, perhaps because he does not consider of different codes of signification: the verbal as well visual/verbal interplay crucial to the form, neglects as the visual. In other words, how readers attempt to just how much the interaction of image and word can resolve one tension may depend on how they resolve inform, indeed enable, the reading of sequences. another. Verbal/visual interplay often muddies the Verbal cues do help to bridge the gaps within a pristine categories of transition that McCloud tries sequence, as seen in common transitional captions to establish in Understanding Comics (moment to such as “Later . . . “ or “Meanwhile . . . “ (devices moment, action to action, scene to scene, and so on). that have fallen from favor as readers become more Words can smooth over transitions and unobtru- versed in reading comics, just as title cards, fades, sively establish a dramatic continuity that belies the irises, and other such transitional devices fell from discontinuity of the images. Two contrasting exam- favor in cinema). In fact verbal continuity can impose ples from Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, both structure on even the most radically disjointed series. scripted by Pekar and illustrated by R. Crumb, illus- Witness, for instance, Spiegelman’s oft-reprinted trate this point: “Ace Hole, Midget Detective,” in which the hero’s In “The Harvey Pekar Name Story” (1977), the nonstop narration (a spoof of hard-boiled fiction) visuals pace and punctuate a verbal monologue, and

44 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING the successive images are near-identical, so much so In contrast, Pekar and Crumb’s “Hypothetical that a reader who held the book at arm’s length and Quandary” (1984) merges words and pictures more squinted would be hard-pressed to see any variation dynamically, and asks more of the reader in her (fig. 11). (Lutes uses a similar strategy in the above quest for closure (fig. 12). This story is inward- example from Jar of Fools, but Pekar and Crumb use looking and nakedly autobiographical, focusing on fewer variations and push the repetition much far- thought rather than talk. Rendered in a bolder, ther.) The story concerns the relationship between brushed style, “Quandary” finds Harvey carrying on name and identity, and the near-sameness of the a dialogue with himself as he drives, then walks, to a drawings both reinforces and subverts the speaker’s bakery to buy bread: How would he react to success preoccupation with self-definition. Here a man named and fame? Would it blunt his writing by robbing him “Harvey Pekar” (not to be confused with the author) of his “working man’s outlook on life”? Would it addresses the reader in forty-eight equal-sized panels dilute his personal vision? This hypothetical dilemma over four pages. His concern? His name—which, (not entirely hypothetical, for Pekar has had brushes though unusual, turns out not to be unique, as he dis- with fame, especially in the wake of the American covers by looking through the phone book, where he Splendor film in 2003) occupies Harvey through his finds not one but two other “Harvey Pekar” listings. entire trip to the bakery; indeed, except for a single The deaths of these two other Pekars (Harvey Sr. and panel in which he buys the bread, all of Harvey’s Harvey Jr., father and son) restore the narrator’s sense words occur in thought balloons, and the dark, of uniqueness, until a third Harvey Pekar appears in lushly textured images position him within a fully the directory, prompting the age-old question, realized world rather than vis-à-vis the reader in a “What’s in a name?” On a more personal level, the full-on monologue. (For a thoughtful discussion of narrator is left asking himself, and us, “Who is Harvey this story in a different context, see Witek, Comic Pekar?”—a question he can answer only with silence, Books as History 148–49.) in the final, wordless panel. Propelled as much by Pekar’s text as by the Like Doucet’s “The Artist,” “The Harvey Pekar subtle authority of Crumb’s pictures, “Hypothetical Name Story” relies on minute changes from panel to Quandary” moves Harvey (and the reader) over a panel to convey a carefully timed sequence. Yet great distance, telescoping his Sunday morning expe- Pekar and Crumb take an even more deliberate dition into three pages. Like the above example from approach, calling for a constant subject and point of Lutes’s Jar of Fools, this story relies on words as well view with only the minutest changes in gesture and as common visual cues for its pacing. Driving, walk- nuance. Pekar’s breakdowns invoke the rhythms of ing, buying bread, walking again—all of these happen verbal storytelling or stand-up comedy, with occa- while Harvey’s internal dialogue carries on without sional silent panels for pause and emphasis; the rela- interruption, until the last two panels find him savor- tionship between the speaker and the reader is ing the bread’s fresh smell, his quandary forgotten. everything, as the former confronts the latter in a The continuity of the verbal text disguises the discon- frustrated attempt at self-affirmation. This attempt is tinuity of the visual: Pekar’s ongoing words, exploring fraught with irony: the consistent, even monotonous, all the twists and turns of Harvey’s thinking, elide the point of view in every panel supplies the very appear- gaps in the visual sequence, making this stylized evo- ance of stability that the narrator craves, but the serial cation of his world seem naturalistic and unforced. repetition of his likeness (subtly varied by Crumb) Whereas “The Harvey Pekar Name Story” weds the erodes our sense of his uniqueness. Both the story’s author’s text to deliberately repetitive breakdowns and rhythm and its themes depend on the unvarying a single, static composition, “Hypothetical Quandary” visuals, which force us to confront this “Harvey uses text to carry the reader from one locale to the Pekar” in all his (thwarted) individuality even as they next without ever losing continuity of thought. These help us concentrate on the spoken text. contrasting examples point up the possibility that

45 Figure 11. Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb, “The Harvey Pekar Name Story.” Bob and Harv’s Comics 4. © Harvey Pekar. Used with permission.

46 Figure 12. Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb, “Hypothetical Quandary.” Bob and Harv’s Comics 80. © Harvey Pekar. Used with permission.

47 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING breakdown may depend on mixing the verbal and the between the concept of “breaking down” a story visual. Thus the two tensions named so far, code vs. into constituent images and the concept of laying code and single image vs. image-in-series, interact out those images together on an unbroken surface. to create a yet more complex tension, soliciting the This tension lies at the heart of comics design—and reader’s active efforts at resolution. poses yet another challenge to the reader. This tension can be illustrated through two contrasting examples from “Waiting,” a series of single- 3. SEQUENCE VS. SURFACE page alternative comic book stories scripted by Linda Perkins and drawn by Dean Haspiel. The first in the In most cases, the successive images in a comic are series (from Keyhole No. 1, June 1996) uses a con- laid out contiguously on a larger surface or surfaces ventional design conceit, often called the “nine-panel (that is, a page or pages). Each surface organizes the grid” by comics readers, to suggest the repetitive, images into a constellation of discrete units, or “pan- unvarying nature of a waitress’s work (fig. 13). The els.” A single image within such a cluster typically strictly gridlike (3-by-3) configuration of the page functions in two ways at once: as a “moment” in an imparts a constant, unyielding rhythm to the piece, one imagined sequence of events, and as a graphic ele- well suited to the patterns of repetition shown in the ment in an atemporal design. Some comics creators compositions. Of all the panels, only the middle one in consciously play with this design aspect, commonly each tier shows significant variation, as it depicts the called page layout, while others remain more con- face of yet another customer asking the same question scious of the individual image-as-moment. Most long- (a question already answered in the menu). Panel four, form comics maintain a tug-of-war between these showing the waitress outside (presumably outside the different functions, encouraging a near-simultaneous restaurant), implies seasonal variation through the use apprehension of the single image as both moment- of snow, though, curiously, the waitress’s outfit has in-sequence and design element. The “page” (or not changed to suit the weather. The drastic elision of planche, as French scholars have it, a term denoting intervening time, and the static repetition of visual the total design unit rather than the physical page on motifs—of exact images, in fact—emphasizes the which it is printed) functions both as sequence and numbing sameness of the waitress’s work routine (not as object, to be seen and read in both linear and unlike the mood of the café scene in Jar of Fools). This nonlinear, holistic fashion. routine is enlivened only by the comic grotesquerie of This tension has been described in various ways. the customers. Here a rigid layout reinforces the air of For instance, French scholar Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, tedium, frustration, and stasis (that is, of waiting, in in a seminal essay, proposed the terms “linear” and two senses) conveyed in the repeated compositions. “tabular” to denote the sequential and nonsequen- If the first “Waiting” story conveys a sense of the tial functions respectively (“Du linéare au tabulaire”; tedium and repetition involved in waiting tables, the see also Peeters 39–40). “Tabular” perhaps conjures third (from Keyhole No. 3, January 1997) conveys a the traditional Western comics layout of a boxlike or hectic, almost frantic impression of the hard work gridlike enclosure, rather like a mathematical table, involved. Its more inventive and complicated layout within which each panel acts as a discrete cell; poten- reinforces the busyness and overwhelming sense of tially, though, it applies to any comics page, even one customer demand called for in the scenario: here the that abandons such rectilinear design. More generally, waitress is working very hard indeed, responding we can say that the single image functions as both gamely to the simultaneous requests and comments a point on an imagined timeline—a self-contained of a large dining party (fig. 14). Perkins and Haspiel moment substituting for the moment before it, and exploit the tension between page (planche) and anticipating the moment to come—and an element of panel to emphasize the stressful, even frenzied, qual- global page design. In other words, there is a tension ity of the dinner from the waitress’s point of view.

48 Figure 13. Linda Perkins and Dean Haspiel, “Waiting.” Keyhole No. 1. © Dean Haspiel and Linda Perkins. Used with permission.

49 Figure 14. Linda Perkins and Dean Haspiel, “Waiting.” Keyhole No. 3. © Dean Haspiel and Linda Perkins. Used with permission.

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The first three panels are page-wide oblongs, rhythm, reminiscent of the gridlike regularity in the crowded with detail, which convey the entire dinner first “Waiting” story. Whereas the top three panels in synoptic fashion. Common questions and banal convey the almost desperate efficiency of the wait- observations appear in tail-less word balloons, as if ress’s efforts, and show her earning what by rights hovering over the party: Where is the bathroom?, ought to be a generous tip, the last three show her This would be the perfect place to bring Mom, and comeuppance, as masculine spite holds her responsi- so on. A man’s request for “a wine glass” in the first ble, by proxy, for another woman’s failure to please. panel leads to his cry for assistance in the second: It is largely through the ingenious layout of the page “Hey!!! I spilled my drink!” (The waitress, intent on that Perkins and Haspiel underscore the unfairness taking another customer’s order, responds by hand- of the man’s response. ing him a towel, without even turning to look.) In The page divides into two design units—the three the third panel, the waitress balances several steam- horizontal panels and the three verticals—to contrast ing coffee cups on her arm while the customers look the waitress’s efforts with her scant reward. In the on in the background, barely visible over the cups. A top three panels, the temporal sequence is confused, full-figure image of the embattled waitress overlaps even collapsed, by the full figure of the waitress, an these three panels, linking them, her six arms spread overlapping design element that functions tabularly Kali-like (roughly speaking) to imply her haste and to stress the frantic nature of her activity. The efficiency. Each hand holds a common tool: a menu, overlapping of images suggests the overwhelming a peppermill, and so on. This full shot of the waitress demands of her work. In the bottom three, the uni- not only provides an irreverent bit of visual parody form, unbroken panels, shorn of any elaborate but also serves to unite these horizontal panels in a design elements, establish a rhythm that leads to the single graphic conceit without arresting the sequence strip’s bitter punch line. of events depicted. What’s more, we are able to see Uniting these two design units, the final image of the events from multiple perspectives at once, for the the man’s face stares at the reader as if seen from first panel appears to show the dinner party from the waitress’s point of view, a visual echo of the the waitress’s viewpoint, while the second and third story’s first panel (in which the man turns to get her depict the waitress herself, in medium and close-up attention). Moreover, the final close-up of the man shots respectively. Her overlapping figure in these contrasts with the close-up of the waitress directly three panels frustrates any sense of linearity, allow- above: she looks left, intent on her work, while he ing for an impossible and provocative at-onceness. seems to be moving right, as if to leave; her face, an The last three panels on the page, forming the unblemished white, contrasts with his darker, more bottom tier, are stunted verticals of equal size, much detailed features. Yet the two are linked by a strong smaller than the images above. They depict a briefer vertical down the right-hand side of the page: in a tab- sequence of events: a final exchange between the ular reading, the last “cell” relates directly to the cell waitress and the man paying the bill. In reply to the above it, while in a linear reading it supplies the skimpy tip (just $5 for a bill of $295), the waitress climax for the entire six-panel story. Linearly, the asks the man, “Was there something wrong with the incident progresses from dinner, through dessert, service?” His response is simple and unequivocal, to the final payoff, while, tabularly, the figures of the though seemingly irrelevant: “Yes. My wife burned waitress and the man vie for position on the page. my toast this morning.” His grotesque, comically The Kali-like waitress clearly dominates the surface, exaggerated features contrast with the idealized yet the man moves from right to center to right again, close-up of the waitress immediately above, lending in an attempt to (re)assert his dominance. The layout a spiteful certainty to his accusation. Here there are no of the entire page stresses the complete figure of the outsized images to violate or overlap the bordered waitress, on the upper left, and the opposed close-ups panels; only three simple images in a deliberate of waitress and man, on the lower right. The fact that

51 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING each panel functions both as a discrete part and words “introduce[s] time by representing that which within the larger context of the layout generates the can only exist in time–sound” (95). But this effect tension that makes this vignette so effective. also depends to some extent on the composition From a reader’s point of view, then, there is always of each drawing: in this case, Haspiel draws many the potential to choose: between seeing the single diners in the horizontal panels, in order to evoke image as a moment in sequence and seeing it in more the confusion of a large gathering. Words, images, holistic fashion, as a design element that contributes graphic design—all conjoin to create a three-panel to the overall balance (or in some cases the meaning- sequence that covers an extended period of time. In ful imbalance) of the layout. The latter way of seeing fact the composition of an image and the use of privileges the dimensions of the total page/planche/ words within it can create a radical synchronism by surface, yet still invokes the meaning of the overall which the single image represents a lengthy interval narrative sequence to explain why the page might be (see McCloud 95–97; Abbott 162–65). In other formatted as it is. Broadly, we may say that comics words, time elapses not only between the panels but exploit format as a signifier in itself; more specifically, also within them. While images in series (break- that comics involve a tension between the experience downs) may convey the passage of time through of reading in sequence and the format or shape of explicit inter-panel transitions, time is also conveyed the object being read. In other words, the art of within the confines of the single panel, thanks to comics entails a tense relationship between perceived composition and verbal/visual tension. time and perceived space. Here we have two contrasting approaches to what McCloud (108) calls “the systematic decompo- RE: TIMING, OR, SERIALITY VS. SYNCHRONISM sition of moving images in a static medium”: on the one hand, seriality, that is, breakdown, in which a As the above discussion reveals, the representation sequence is represented through a series of contigu- of time in comics can vary considerably: from precise ous panels; on the other, synchronism, in which a breakdowns that depict a sequence of events in single panel represents a sequence of events occur- minute detail to single drawings that conflate a ring at different “times.” While seriality may encour- whole series of events in one panel. In our second age a facile comparison between comics and cinematic “Waiting” example, for instance, the horizontal pan- montage, synchronism demonstrates the limits of the els, sprinkled with disembodied word balloons, repre- comparison, offering images that can make sense sent a kind of synchronism, a distillation of time in only within a static medium. Examples of synchro- which the implied duration of the sequence is rather nism in comics include the diagrammatic “motion ambiguous, enough so as to cover an entire meal. In lines” and other types of ideographic shorthand that contrast, the vertical panels at the bottom of the denote movement, and the use of multiple, some- page are precisely timed to depict a brief sequence times overlapping images of a single subject within a succinctly and unambiguously. Thus a single page given panel (McCloud 110–12). can move from a vague evocation of passing time One example of multiple images in a single panel to a precise, incremental depiction of single incident would be the common “take,” in which a character’s (in this case a momentary exchange of dialogue: sudden reaction—typically, one of surprise or alarm— brief, clipped, even brusque). Such changes in rhythm is shown through the partial overlapping of different occur so often in comics as to be almost invisible. facial expressions. A more elaborate technique is In the case of “Waiting” this effect is, again, what McCloud calls the “polyptych,” in which sev- partly the result of an ingenious layout. It is also eral distinct images of a single figure (or set of fig- partly the result of the unconventional use of float- ures) are laid over a single continuous background ing balloons to convey snippets of banal, dinner- (fig. 15). That background may be (as in McCloud’s table conversation. As McCloud observes, the use of example) explicitly divided into smaller units by

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panel borders, which serve to reinforce the break- must, read this image or set of images in more than down of the larger image into successive moments one way. This demand calls attention to the ways of “time.” In cartoonists’ parlance, such divided comics negotiate time and space, which is why polyptychs are called split panels. They dramati- polyptychs tend to be used when time or space cally exploit the tension between linear and tabular become the thematic concerns of narrative itself. readings of the image by creating a series of panels Polyptychs are powerful tools for timing, or, alter- that also acts as a single unit—what Eisner calls a nately, for suggesting a character’s timeless immer- “metapanel” (Comics & Sequential Art 63). Such sion in a rich, diverting space. “split” panels are often used to emphasize precise Bill Watterson demonstrates the potential of the sequencing or deliberate rhythms. In contrast, an synchronistic panel in a Calvin and Hobbes Sunday undivided polyptych (that is, a single, undivided page (reprinted in Weirdos from Another Planet!, frame that represents an extended span of time 1990) that succeeds in evoking both speed and envi- synchronistically) tends to stress haste, intensity, near- ronment (fig. 16). This single-panel outing depicts the simultaneity—or, oddly enough, the opposite: stillness title characters in a typically frenetic yet contemplative and inertia. mood, as they race along in their wagon to make the Whether divided or not, the polyptych blurs most of the last days of summer. Watterson suggests comics’ equation of time with space. It invokes the their haste by directing the eye across the continuous tensions established above, single image vs. image- background, as Calvin and Hobbes careen over hill and in-series and sequence vs. surface, to generate ten- dale, describing an arc that brings them closer to the sion of another order: between serial and sychronic reader, then takes them further away. Both the word readings of a single panel. This is what I would call balloons and the tree trunks in the foreground (which a second-degree tension (one that presupposes the serve as de facto panel borders) parse this scene into reader’s awareness of the other basic tensions). successive moments, introducing the time element, yet Exploiting this second-degree tension assumes a the unbroken background blurs our sense of time, sophisticated reader, because it requires that reader conveying at once the characters’ deep immersion in both to choose and to defer choosing: I can, indeed this scene of natural beauty and the headlong urgency

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Figure 16. Bill Watterson, “Calvin & Hobbes.” Weirdos from Another Planet! 89. “Calvin and Hobbes” © 1988 Watterson. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved. of their ride (a trope familiar from previous Calvin classicism of adventure strip illustrators such as Alex strips). Synchronism allows Watterson to linger on the Raymond (Flash Gordon), Kirby’s cartooning recalls vividness of the scene, while honoring the restless, Futurism in its decomposition of movement and energetic nature of his characters. For the boy and his Cubism in its simultaneous depiction of different tiger, nature is an arena of frantic activity—one in points of view. Though Kirby’s crowded spreads which “lingering” is usually done at full speed. The seem to capture discrete and explosive moments of extraordinary thing about this page is the way it con- action, in fact they represent extended spans of time jures up both the impatience of childhood and the in synoptic fashion. timeless, still quality of the child’s surroundings. Take, for instance, the scene-setting image of Synchronism can take other, less obvious forms, warfare (fig. 17) found at the beginning of Kirby’s such as in the characteristic “splash” pages or New Gods No. 9 (July 1972, reprinted 1998). Figures spreads by the celebrated comic book artist Jack loom in the extreme foreground and middle distance; Kirby, known for his attempts to render motion in figures dot the deep background as well. Motion static form: multiplane compositions, slashing diago- lines give lingering physical presence to temporal nals, drastic foreshortening and extreme distortion phenomena, such as the squirting of acid and the of the human figure. This style, regarded as “cine- leaping of bodies, while the posing of every figure matic” by many (apparently including Kirby himself) suggests a vast surge toward the right-hand margin. in fact represents a distinctly uncinematic way of Figures affront the viewer in drastic close-up and evoking movement in static form, a way much more recede into the background along sharp diagonals, suggestive than literal. Though influenced by the while the reading order of the word balloons guides

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Figure 17. Jack Kirby (inked by Mike Royer), “The Bug.” Jack Kirby’s New Gods 198–99. © 1972 DC Comics. Used with permission. All rights reserved. the eye from left to right, top to bottom. Tension what appears to be (the story equivocates, forcing the between word and image contributes to our sense of reader to suspend judgment) a drug-addled sexual elapsed time: one balloon notes that the attackers, imbroglio between Mary, her occasional lover Face, the so-called “bugs,” have disabled the first line of and a glamorous woman named Roxanne (fig. 18). defense, while the next balloon promises to open a Fleener’s trademark “cubismo” style, a dizzying blend breach in the wall that surrounds the enemy. The of Picasso and her own sharp-edged technique, offers leader of the charge, “Forager,” stands on the far right, a radically disorienting minefield of interpretive choices his words urging movement, his hand beckoning the for the reader, as figures blend in a sexually suggestive bugs toward the margin: “Forward! Forward! Keep synchrony. Is this a dream, as Mary’s sleepy expres- going!” Overall, the characters exhibit a peculiar angu- sion on the top left implies? Provoking and humorous larity that shades toward geometric abstraction yet imagery—in particular, Mary’s startled reaction to the suggests fierce activity (swarming) and directionality (clitoral? phallic?) guitar-playing figure that emerges, (forward!). Through composition and verbal/visual erect, from a vagina—suggests her sexual encounter interplay, Kirby captures successive moments simulta- with Roxanne, an encounter which belies her own neously; this is not a snapshot but a tableau. homophobic anxieties (shown earlier in the story Such synchronic images need not be confined to when Mary worries about playing a musical gig in a the hyperbolic vocabulary of adventure comics. They lesbian bar). The overlapping images imply an entire can depict more mundane types of activity as well. For sequence of activities that Mary cannot remember instance, the climactic full-page image from Mary upon waking the next morning. Like Kirby, Fleener Fleener’s autobiographical “Rock Bottom” depicts uses a single composition to suggest successive stages

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Figure 18. Mary Fleener, “Rock Bottom.” Life of the Party 46. © Mary Fleener. Used with permission.

of action. (That two such different cartoonists, divided lightning-fast, as long intervals of torpor are punctu- thematically, ideologically, and historically, both exploit ated by sudden fits of frantic, violent activity. At the ambiguity of timing suggests that this is an area times Kurtzman’s split panels emphasize the painful ripe for study.) slowness of war and the numbing sameness of the In contrast to the temporally ambiguous pages of action, which threaten to make the participants indis- Kirby, Fleener, and Watterson, the split panel tends to tinct and, in fact, interchangeable; at other times, his stress strong rhythms and the systematic analysis split panels provide a precise, almost stroboscopic, of movement. For example, in the war comics of breakdown of rapid movement. Often these split cartoonist-editor Harvey Kurtzman (published by panels are true polyptychs, showing a single figure EC in the early 1950s), split panels serve to capture moving against a continuous background; at other the broken rhythms of warfare, alternately slow and times, they are a means of parsing simultaneous

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Figure 19. Harvey Kurtzman, John Severin, and Will Elder, “Campaign,” page 5 (excerpt). Two-Fisted Tales, Vol. 3. © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc. Used with permission. actions into successive frames—effectively turning the advantage in Richmond—is voiced by more than one moment, one panel, into a sequence of two or one man, but the faces and personalities of the men more. Though the split panel’s function depends on are indistinct. Though the breakdown of the image context, in every case it presents the reader with an into three successive panels punctuates the soldiers’ ambiguity: should it be read as simultaneous or as speech and reinforces the numbing rhythms of the successive, as a moment or moments? march, it does not single out the speakers. This indif- Consider, for instance, the Civil War story “Cam- ference to individuality serves the story’s larger argu- paign” (originally from Two-Fisted Tales No. 31, Jan./ ment, which stresses the confusion, grinding tedium, Feb. 1953) drawn by John Severin and Will Elder over facelessness, and futility of war. In the end, the name- Kurtzman’s breakdowns. Here much of the action less sergeant, called simply “Sarge,” will succumb to depends on waiting for things to happen: Kurtzman fever (ironically, not to wounds suffered in battle) and focuses on the peninsular campaign of 1862, as will be replaced by one of the recent recruits, called Federal troops advance on Richmond, Virginia, but the simply “Boy.” This replacement assumes not only the “action,” so eagerly anticipated by the new recruits, sergeant’s rank but also his demeanor, even his mostly involves digging in, waiting, and marching. In appearance. The split panel in mid-story, implying the mid-tale, a split panel (fig. 19) shows the Federals monotony and impersonality of war, anticipates this marching through Seven Pines toward Richmond, their final irony, reinforcing the ideological thrust of advance punctuated by the sounds of cannon fire in this characteristic Kurtzman story: warfare is meaning- the woods: “KLAK KLIKITY CRASH” (5). The weary sol- less and numbing. This split panel, unlike the examples diers, bent with the weight of their packs and rifles, are above, is clearly divided into discrete blocks, but, like divided into three panels but on closer examination them, depends on a sense of temporal ambiguity. comprise a single composition, in which the individual A similar device appears, but to opposite effect, figures are hardly distinguishable from each other. at the beginning of “Enemy Contact!” (Two-Fisted Are these three different sets of soldiers, or three Tales No. 22, July/Aug. 1951), illustrated by Jack successive images of the same soldiers? The soldiers’ Davis—one of many Korean War tales penned by complaint—that their delay in Yorktown has cost them Kurtzman while that war was still being fought. This

57 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING tale, which concerns an attempt, in the midst of grenade which has just taken Big Feet’s life. The split battle, to save the life of a soldier with acute appen- panel allows Kurtzman to zero in on each important dicitis, begins with brutal images of death, as three element in his story (Lee, Big Feet, and the trap), American soldiers are mowed down in quick succes- while placing Big Feet (the victim of Kurtzman’s sion by “an enemy machine gun” (fig. 20). The tragic irony) in dead center. The American soldiers, opening splash panel shows a soldier against a stone on whose advance the entire plot depends, wall, falling, contorted with pain, the POK POK POK of approach cautiously in the background. the machine gun driving holes into the wall behind Time-wise, Kurtzman’s “Air Burst” may be said to him. The four panels beneath, taken together, form represent the opposite of the approach shown in, a single image, tracing the line of machine gun fire for instance, Fleener’s “Rock Bottom.” While Fleener as it sweeps across the wall, felling two more soldiers overlaps images in a single synchronistic panel, creat- and almost claiming another. The breakdown of the ing a dizzying and suggestive simultaneity, Kurtzman moment into four shorter intervals—merest fractions uses three discrete panels to direct the reading of a sin- of a second, one imagines—isolates each victim, gle, highly charged moment. In “Rock Bottom,” as in stressing the wantonness of the attack. These are our Watterson and Kirby examples, timing is vague events; these are individual deaths. Yet, while the but evocative—open—while in “Air Burst” the tim- panel borders parse the event into microseconds, the ing is overdetermined, precisely controlled, almost weaving of the sound effects over the images in an metronomic. From these examples, we can see that unbroken line (POK POK KRAK) turns this rapid-fire the image-series alone does not determine timing in breakdown into a single, shocking tableau. (The comics, for it is possible to have a series of panels in next page will show us this same wall, in a single, which no time seems to pass, as well as a single panel oblong panel, with three corpses in front of it.) into which moments, hours, even days, are com- Kurtzman’s control of reading rhythm is methodi- pressed. There is no single prescription for how the cal, and radical. He went as far as using the split tensions of image/series or sequence/surface are to be panel to stretch out the reading of single moment in resolved; rather, there is always an underlying tension time (the antithesis of the synchronic approach seen between different possible ways of reading, between above in Kirby and Fleener). He would break a serial and synchronistic timing. Understanding comics moment down to suggest the way the eye might conventions only heightens that tension. The reader (almost instantaneously) sweep over it and take it must invoke what she knows of comics, including in—that is, “read” it. For instance, in the Korean image/series and sequence/surface, to entertain and War story “Air Burst” (Frontline Combat No. 4, ultimately to reconcile different understandings of time. Jan./Feb. 1952), a final split panel stresses the story’s ultimate irony (fig. 21). The Chinese soldier “Big Feet” is killed by a booby trap set by his own com- 4. TEXT AS EXPERIENCE VS. TEXT AS OBJECT panion, “Lee,” whose body Big Feet carries toward the American line in the hope of surrendering. The At a higher level of generalization, the tension split panel depicts the moment after, as American sequence vs. surface is but one example of a larger troops on the advance (for whom the trap was relationship between (a) experience over time and intended) discover the scene. Directing our eye (b) the dimensions of comics as material objects. The across the page, the three subpanels are keyed to latter aspect, comics’ materiality, includes not only Kurtzman’s captions, above; his emphatic prose the design or layout of the page but also the physical isolates each part of the picture for our perusal. In makeup of the text, including its size, shape, bind- order: the long-dead body of Lee “sprawls on the ing, paper, and printing. Like traditional books, but path”; Big Feet lies dead next to him, a tripwire tan- perhaps more obviously, long-form comics can exploit gled around his foot; and the wire connects to the both design and material qualities to communicate

58 Figure 20. Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis, “Enemy Contact,” page 1. Two-Fisted Tales, Vol. 1. © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc. Used with permission.

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Figure 21. Harvey Kurtzman, “Air Burst,” page 6 (excerpt). Frontline Combat, Vol. 1. © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc. Used with permission.

or underscore the meaning(s) available in the text. Gravett, “Hergé”). These cartoonists often treat its Indeed, many comics make it impossible to distin- associations ironically, as if to question Hergé’s ideal guish between text per se and secondary aspects union of style and subject (among many others: such as design and the physical package, because Swarte, Ever Meulen, Daniel Torres, the late Yves they continually invoke said aspects to influence the Chaland, and, in perhaps less obvious but still signifi- reader’s participation in meaning-making. cant ways, Jacques Tardi, Vittorio Giardino, and the Material considerations influence not only the United States’ Jason Lutes). In the work of such car- total design and packaging of a publication but also toonists as Swarte and Torres, the Clear Line carries matters of style and technique. The delineation of an obvious ideological as well as stylistic burden: images, for instance, is always affected by the mate- their comics not only parody racist stereotypes redo- riality of the text, for, as Eisner observes, comic art is lent of Tintin’s late-colonial ethos but also reveal necessarily rendered “in response to the method of a fascination with blurring the distinction between its reproduction” (Comics & Sequential Art 153). In organic and inorganic form, a tendency perfectly fact style in comics is often profoundly influenced by realized in Swarte’s cool, ironic work for both chil- technological and economic means, and many car- dren and adults (see Heller). toonists develop highly self-conscious relationships Often the Clear Line seems to deny the material- with those means, relationships that, from a reader’s ity of the comics page, relying on precise linework point of view, can become fraught with significance. and flat colors to create pristine and detailed settings For instance, the European Klare Lijn or Ligne Claire into which simply drawn characters are inserted. (“Clear Line”) tradition of cartooning, popularized in Though the settings are often much more complex the much-loved Tintin series by Belgian master than the characters, the two are equated through an Hergé, privileges smooth, continuous linework, sim- unerring evenness of line: like the characters, the plified contours and bright, solid colors, while avoid- settings tend to be without shadow, except in the ing frayed lines, exploded forms, and expressionistic most diagrammatic sense, and also relatively tex- rendering. A style of drawing linked with the flat tureless. The resultant tendency toward flatness pro- color of Tintin and similar series, the Klare Lijn (so duces what McCloud calls a “democracy of form,” labeled by the Dutch cartoonist Joost Swarte) is in which each shape has the same clarity and value, marked by its traditional association with children’s conferring the same authority on cartoon figures as comics, yet has grown to embrace or at least influ- it does on meticulous scenic detail (190). This ten- ence a whole school of alternative cartoonists who dency can of course be undercut, as in Swarte’s strip work for adults as well as, or instead of, children (see “Torn Together” (“Samen gescheurd” in Dutch),

60 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING which spoofs the democracy of forms and calls work depends in part on his use of rough, energetic attention to the materiality of the page (fig. 22). marks to reconfigure characters lifted from television Beginning with a panel whose upper left corner has cartooning and children’s comics, characters usually deliberately been torn off, “Torn Together” goes on rendered with a slick consistency befitting industrial- to depict a contretemps in which one man tears off ized cel animation. The approach recalls R. Crumb’s the lapels of another’s jacket, then tears off his ear, anxious reinvention of cartoon icons in the late to which the other responds by tearing out the first 1960s (see chapter 1), but with an even greater man’s right arm.4 (The dripping blood looks particu- emphasis on pure mark-making rather than figura- larly incongruous in the Klare Lijn.) The second man tion. (The dark texturing also recalls other under- proceeds to stuff the disembodied arm and ear into ground pioneers such as Aline Kominsky-Crumb and a vase to create a decoration, which he waters like a Rory Hayes, as well as Panter’s British contemporary plant. This is an especially clear example of Swarte’s Savage Pencil.) interest in the confusion of living and unliving form: Many alternative comic artists, both in the United the flat coloring and pristine linework create an States and abroad, have followed in Panter’s wake, Hergé-like scenario that ironically equates the tear- drawing on the ironic tension between simplified ing of paper with the tearing of people’s bodies. The cartoon vocabulary and roughhewn graphic tech- style is inextricably part of, and prerequisite to, the nique. (Such disparate artists as David Sandlin, story’s meaning. Jonathon Rosen, Julie Doucet, and Lloyd Dangle all In contrast to the Clear Line are more expressionis- qualify, as do such Europeans as M. S. Bastian of tic styles that revel in the texture of the page, insisting Switzerland and Max Andersson of Denmark.) This on the materiality of the print medium. Gary Panter, tension often serves to express a violent and absur- for instance, hailed as “the Father of Punk Comics,” dist worldview colored by apocalyptic anxieties, as in has pioneered a raw, “ratty-line” approach at odds much of Panter’s own work (see McKenna; Panter, with the pristine illusionism of the clear line Interview with John Kelly). In general, the post- (Callahan 10, 93; Spiegelman and Mouly, Read 8). Panter ratty-line (or “ugly art” or “comix brut”) Panter himself views his work in terms of “marks” school subverts the cultural and ideological reassur- rather than lines, a distinction that privileges expres- ances proffered by the Clear Line, and as such repre- siveness over clarity or precision (Groth and Fiore sents a visual argument about the implications of 231–32). In contrast to the school of Hergé, which style. This argument foregrounds the active role of epitomizes the use of line as a means of definition and the reader in constructing meaning. verisimilitude, Panter’s mark-making emphasizes tex- Beyond the bald ironies of punk, many other ture as a means of immediate, visceral expression recent comics invoke the materiality of print by using (fig. 23). He privileges the raw gestural qualities of a suggestive styles based on tone and texture, just as drawing, as a record of physical activity, over its the ligne claire is based on the precise delineation of iconic or referential function. Panter’s work—notably form. Such styles (especially evident in the European his occasional series Jimbo, which follows a punk avant-garde, with its objet d’art approach) tend to everyman through various bizarre and fragmented explore the relationship between figure and ground. episodes (for example, Cola Madness, Jimbo in For instance, French artist Yvan Alagbé (fig. 24) often Purgatory)—boasts a disorienting variety of graphic approaches figuration in a sparse, open, almost ges- techniques, as well as an oblique and disjointed tural way, despite a finely nuanced realism of expres- approach to language. The result is a ragged cartoon sion; his pages pose indistinct or half-completed surrealism, often narrative in only the loosest sense, figures against blank, undifferentiated backgrounds, fusing the iconography of comics and animation exploring the tension between positive and negative with a painterly, fine-arts sensibility and the aggres- space. Simply put, Alagbé’s characters seem con- sive energy of punk. Indeed the humor of Panter’s stantly on the verge of dissolving into the page itself.

61 Figure 22. Joost Swarte, “Torn Together.” Raw No. 7, page 2 (inside front cover). © Joost Swarte. Used with permission.

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Figure 23. Gary Panter, “Jimbo is ‘Running Sore.’” Read Yourself Raw 53 (excerpt). © Gary Panter. Used with permission.

His work thus reveals a profound faith in the reader’s narrative significance. Ditto those artists known for capacity for visual closure, as it calls on our ability to their painterly manipulation of texture, such as France’s complete a process of figuration only begun by the Jean-Claude Götting (who creates dense, dark imagery artist. In such works as Nègres Jaunes (1995) Alagbé with a lithograph-like grain); Italy’s Stefano Ricci (who turns this daring graphic technique to cultural argu- sculpts thick, almost palpable tones by alternating ment, thematizing the blackness and whiteness of drawing, erasing, and painting on fragile paper); the ink and paper as signs of ethnic and cultural differ- United States’ Debbie Drechsler (who balances contour ence (see Beaty, “AMOK”; Pollman). and texture through the mesmerizing buildup of deli- While Alagbé’s work relies on traditional grid- cate lines); and Switzerland’s Thomas Ott (whose grim, like paneling to enclose and delimit its open spaces, often horrific fables are carved out of scratchboard, German artist Anna Sommer (Remue-Ménage/Damen white on black—a perfect union of technique and sub- Dramen) allows series of images to spill freely across ject). All of these artists are characterized by a keen the undivided expanse of the page (fig. 25). She too grasp not only of comics as a narrative form but also of displays great confidence in the reader’s ability to con- the relationship between narrative content and physi- struct meaning from fragments. Her fluid approach to cal medium, that is, between the experience of reading sequence vs. surface mirrors her thematic interest in and the material object. Calling attention to that rela- openness and surprise, in particular her exploration (as tionship, these creators highlight the distance between here) of the mutability of gender. This method goes text and reader, and foreground the reader’s creative beyond questions of layout to the interrogation of the intervention in meaning-making. Their works bear out physical page as surface and ground. Indeed, artists like Pascal Lefèvre’s dictum that “the materiality of a comic Alagbé and Sommer call for a materialist criticism, one is essential. . . . The form of a drawing draws attention in which print-specific qualities such as drawing tech- to the object represented in a way that deviates from nique, tone, and surface can be interrogated for their ordinary perception” (“Recovering Sensuality” 142).

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Figure 24. Yvan Alagbé, “Etoile d’Orient.” Le Cheval sans Tête, Vol. 5: Nous sommes les Maures 38. © Yvan Alagbé. Used with permission.

The above examples may seem exotic to conveys a key moment in the courtship between American readers—but one need not look far afield his father Vladek and his mother Anja by drawing to find invocations of the page-as-object. In Art a photograph of Anja into, and onto, the page Spiegelman’s celebrated Maus, for instance, the (1:17). Anja’s “photo” dominates the page, suggest- page repeatedly refers to itself, as “objects” overlap ing both the factualness of Spiegelman’s account the panels, creating at once an illusion of volume and Anja’s growing importance in Vladek’s reminis- and a sense of intimacy (as if these found objects cence (see chapter 5, fig. 56). This ironic appeal to have been mounted in a diary or scrapbook). Maps, the book’s status as a physical object is complex and tickets, photographs—these commonplace items heavily fraught, as we shall see later on. Suffice to appear to have been laid “on top” of the page, as if say here that the reader’s awareness is called to the to ratify the book’s documentary nature as a family materiality of the book itself (albeit through an illu- auto/biography. Early on, for example, Spiegelman sion), in such a way as to inflect her understanding

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Figure 25. Anna Sommer, “La femme du chasseur.” Remue Ménage (n. pag.). © Anna Sommer. Used with permission. of the narrative. This gambit is characteristic of CONCLUSION: TOWARD THE HABIT OF Spiegelman, an artist for whom print is a privileged QUESTIONING point of reference. (Maus, notwithstanding its subsequent reformatting for an archival CD-ROM, is Comics are complex objects. In light of the above dis- first and foremost a book.) Such self-reflexive com- cussion, the experience of reading them would seem mentary is in fact quite common in comics: beyond to call for negotiation among various possible mean- questions of texture and volume, the materiality of ings. Despite the codification of techniques designed texts is often highlighted through embedded visual to ease this negotiation—for example, the use of references to books, other comics, and picture-mak- overdetermined transitions (Meanwhile . . . ), rigid ing in general—things and activities inevitably gridlines, and various pictographic conventions— fraught with special significance for cartoonists and there is no one “right” way to read the comics page, their readers. nor any stable, Platonic conception of that page.

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There is simply no consistent formula for resolving of form enables her to become the kind of audience the tensions intrinsic to the experience. In fact aware- the author envisions. As comics readers have ness of these tensions, an awareness expected of the become more experienced, comics have traced an prepared or “sophisticated” reader, may multiply the arc of development similar to other cultural forms, number of choices available to the reader and can such as the novel and cinema: away from presenta- result in an even more intensive questioning of the tional devices designed to ease audience adjustment page (as the above discussion of timing, for instance, and toward a more confident and thorough explo- makes clear). The foregoing analysis, then, cannot ration of the form’s peculiar tensions, potentialities, tell us How to Read Comics; it can only suggest cer- and limits. tain heretofore neglected aspects of the experience. This is not to say that today’s comics are uniformly Some may yet object that the form needs no more sophisticated than the comics of yesteryear. instruction manual, no “how to” book to get between Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find a more readers and their pleasure. Admittedly, there is much thoroughgoing exploration of the comics page than the in comics that seems intuitive, much that seems Sundays in George Herriman’s Krazy Kat (1916–44), naively pleasurable; the form’s reliance on pictures can which playfully poke at every convention without make it (or certain aspects of it) immediately accessi- ever compromising the strip’s blend of wry lyricism ble, even to many readers who have not mastered and thematic depth. Likewise, in the work of the all the disciplines that formal literacy demands. I have form’s pioneers—for example, in Rodolphe Töpffer’s seen evidence of this among the children in my own epochal series of comics albums (c. 1827–46)—we find life. Yet, as the above discussion shows, the form continual, and ever-surprising, experimentation. But uses diverse means to solicit and guide reader partici- the interrogation of comics form has recently become pation and always involves choosing among different more widespread, intensive, and self-conscious. This options—different strategies of interpretation, dif- is true even in the tightly controlled precincts of ferent ways of understanding. There may be much American newspaper strips, where, for example, Bill more going on than mere “picture reading”: comic Watterson’s use of breakdown to juxtapose reality art is characterized by plurality, instability, and tension, and fantasy (in Calvin and Hobbes) has led to com- so much so that no single formula for interpreting the parable moves in many other strips. Yet it is especially page can reliably unlock every comic. Far from being true of alternative comics and graphic novels in the too simple to warrant analysis, comic art is complex wake of Spiegelman’s Maus. In the alternative comics enough to frustrate any attempt at an airtight analyti- avant-garde, we find radical reexaminations of form cal scheme. from such respected cartoonists as Chris Ware, whose In fact comic art is growing more complex all the ACME Novelty Library brings a post-Spiegelman rigor time. The form is in flux, becoming more self-conscious to the manipulation of design and color, and France’s in its explorations as creators increasingly recognize Marc-Antoine Mathieu (Julius Corentin Acquefacques, the knowledge and sophistication of readers. Ploys prisonnier des rêves), who has experimented, dizzy- once deemed necessary to relieve formal tensions and ingly, with the design and material packaging of to settle ambiguities (overdetermined transitions, comics-as-books (see Beaty, “Compelling Experimen- word/image redundancy, predictable layouts, and so tation”). All of these works point to a growing forth) have become less common, as authors have awareness of “the audience” as experienced, knowl- come to expect readers who are experienced, play- edgeable, and eager to recognize its own role in ful, and tolerant of discontinuity. This vision of a making meaning. knowing readership has changed the art form, for an We cannot acknowledge the scope and sophisti- author’s imagining of her audience profoundly influ- cation of that role as long as we insist on the ease ences her sense of form and her willingness to take and simplicity of comics. The notion of ease, so often chances, just as, conversely, the reader’s awareness mobilized in criticism (even appreciative criticism) of

66 THE OTHERNESS OF COMICS READING the form, overlooks the complexity and complicity aware of both? How are the boundaries, or margins, involved in reading comics, reducing this interactive of the page used? How are the successive images process to the passive registration of a few highly- delimited and juxtaposed? charged impressions. This is why criticism in English, • What relationship does this page create between until very recently, has been unable to distinguish time and space? Am I ever in doubt about that between skimming comics and reading comics, with relationship? the result that critical discussion of the form has • How does the design of this publication reinforce or been generally impoverished and, at times, irrespon- work against its content? Does reading this text feel sible. My hope is that the above discussion, though like witnessing a story, or handling an object, or both? it stops short of trying to construct a universal critical scheme, will inspire readers to ask probing questions Such questions, while perhaps impressionistic, proof the comics they read, questions such as: vide lenses through which we can more fully appreciate, and more pointedly critique, the comics text. • What can I glean from the different codes (images, In fact addressing such questions is a must, not words, symbols) invoked here? What can I learn only for the discussion of comics as literature but also from their interaction? How do words and images for sociological and ideological analyses of comics as relate to or approach each other? artifacts of mass culture. For it is the reader’s effort • Does the appearance of the written text seem to to resolve such questions that positions her vis-à-vis influence or inflect my reading of it, and if so, how? the text, indeed that defines her as “the reader,” • Does there seem to be one unified “message” here, calling on her to assume a particular role. If reading reinforced by the overlapping of codes, or instead a is an act of reimagining oneself in response to the conflict and contradiction between messages? demands of a text, then we need to consider how • How am I to understand this sequence of images, comics present their “demands,” that is, how they based on what I have to do to connect one image to reach out to their readers and urge them to fulfill the next? What is included, and what excluded, certain tasks. Comics demand a different order of lit- from the sequence? How do words and symbols eracy: they are never transparent, but beckon their assist, or complicate, my efforts to read this sequence readers in specific, often complex ways, by generating as such? tension among their formal elements. Recognition of • How does the layout of this page or surface—the this complex relationship is prerequisite to grappling relative size, shape, and positioning of its images— with the literary, sociohistorical and ideological inflect my understanding of the narrative? When I aspects of the form—and such a recognition lies look at this page, am I conscious of its overall design, behind and indeed motivates the remainder of this or of the way I move from one design element to the study, as we turn our attention to groundbreaking next? Are there moments at which it helps to be examples of alternative comics.

67 CHAPTERCHAPTER THREE 1

A BROADER CANVAS

GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP

Between its launch in 1981 and its fissioning into separate projects in 1996, the anthology Love & Rockets broke new ground for comics in terms of both content and form. Created by brothers Gilbert, Jaime, and (occasionally) Mario Hernandez,1 Love & Rockets fused underground and mainstream traditions, in the process reaching new audiences for whom such distinctions were moot. Though it at first built on such shopworn genres as superheroics and romance, Love & Rockets transcended these conventions, revitalizing long-form comics with new themes, new types of characters, and fresh approaches to narrative technique. In so doing, it became the quintessential alternative comic, indeed gained the status of a brand—so much so that, in 2001, after a five-year hiatus, the Hernandez brothers yielded to reader demand and once again brought their work together under the Love & Rockets banner. (Volume 2 of the series continues as of this writing.) The thematic and formal innovations of Love & Rockets were of a piece: what the series had to say and how it went about saying it were knotted together. This interrelation of theme and form stands out most clearly in Gilbert’s cycle of stories about the fictional Central American village of Palomar, a series most often referred to as Heartbreak Soup. Over its thirteen years (1983–96), Heartbreak Soup yielded a wealth of stories and achieved a novelistic breadth and complexity to which few comics aspire. (Of course it did not do so alone: Jaime’s Locas series, the “other half” of Love & Rockets, is gutsy, complex, and heart-rendingly beautiful—also beyond our present scope, alas.) The Palomar tales demonstrated, bountifully, the art form’s potential to evoke complex settings and characters—and to address thorny sociopolitical issues. Indeed Heartbreak Soup, at its height, seems nothing

68 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP less than a profound meditation on the social on distinctive and complex female characters. These responsibility and political efficacy of comics. characters, as they matured, mixed caricature, low- Happily, readers can now discover the whole of key realism, and a refreshingly inclusive sense of Palomar in one monumental volume, titled simply beauty. As such, they broke with the fetishism of Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (published in both mainstream adventure comics, with their fever- 2003). This single, definitive volume is the best way ish celebration of the disciplined, superheroic body, to dive into Gilbert Hernandez’s work. Yet the col- and most underground comix, with their scabrous, lected Palomar in effect denies its own origins, for it at times misogynistic sexual satire. The brothers’ the- hides the way serialization both enabled and con- matic innovations—the punk milieu, their eagerness strained Hernandez’s creative process. The growth to explore their Latino roots, and their regard for and eventual contraction of Heartbreak Soup, the women—inspired fierce loyalty among their readers. series, epitomize the challenges faced by long-form For many, alternative comics began with Love & comics. Though Hernandez successfully exploited Rockets. serial publication to give his stories a broader canvas, Letters from fans in early issues of L&R (1983–86) and in the process developed radical new ways of testify to this loyalty. For example, in issue No. 12 evoking space and time in comics, serialization also (July 1985) a self-styled “hard-core” punk applauds curbed and directed his work, forcing him to con- the book for portraying punks “as human beings front, in the novel Poison River and subsequent with gen-yoo-wine personalities rather than the efforts, the limits of periodical publishing. The story switchblade-wielding Nazi vermin we [are] in the of Heartbreak Soup, in short, is the richest, also one mainstream publications.” Similarly, a correspondent of the most complex and problematic, examples of in No. 14 (Nov. 1985) praises Jaime’s depiction of alternative comics in the long form. the hard-core scene, which, he says, contributes to the book’s “almost realistic” view of young people, in contrast to the aseptic, “Hardy boys-type” of BREAKING NEW GROUND characterization found in most comic books. In No. 13 (Sept. 1985), one reader lauds the multicultural Love & Rockets announced its difference from the cast of Love & Rockets, calling the book “the first outset: in magazine (roughly 8.5-by-11-inch) rather real ‘All-American’ comic, in which the viewers find than comic book form, it introduced themes and themselves totally immersed in the lives of different characters hitherto unknown in American comics. racial groups” (a point echoed years later by The Specifically, Jaime and Gilbert evoked Southern Nation’s Patrick Markee, who, in a rave review, rec- California’s punk rock scene, capturing its rough-and- ognized the world of L&R as “the kind of new tumble nature while applying its DIY (do-it-yourself) American place that is almost never identified on our aesthetic to their own work. (Rock ’n’ roll remains a cultural road map” [25–26]). In No. 18 (Sept. 1986), constant reference point throughout L&R.) At the a woman from El Salvador writes, “I am extremely same time, Los Bros Hernandez (as they became proud of the way you’re representing our idiosyn- known) pushed back the horizons of U.S. comics by crasy to the rest of the world. . . . You are vindicating portraying Mexican-American culture with sensitiv- our culture and introducing it better than any ‘fine’ ity and candor, thus bringing to comics a new sense artist.” of (multi)cultural diversity, vitality, and tension. Regarding gender, in No. 13 a female reader Social and political life in California’s barrios, and in praises Los Bros’ positive treatment of women, say- the provincial villages of Latin America, became their ing, “I absolutely love the strength of the females abiding concerns, indeed the wellsprings of most of you’ve created. . . . It’s about time some comic- their work. In addition, Los Bros defied the long- book women were strong and human at the same standing masculine bias of comic books by focusing time.” In No. 14, likewise, a woman writes of female

69 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP characters who, at last, “aren’t portrayed as meek story elements: characters, locales, and events past mouses who hold their men in God-like regard . . . or and present. Such radical breakdowns demand radical men-haters.” Such letters, often from people greater inferential effort from readers. Like the writing to a comic “for the first time,” pepper the excerpt from Lutes’s Jar of Fools studied in chapter 2 early issues of Love & Rockets, as do accolades for Los (fig. 10), Gilbert and Jaime freely manipulate time, Bros’ portrayals of “real life” and “real people.” These space, and point of view, collapsing hours or even letters reveal a faithful core readership, one that rec- years into abrupt transitions, splicing together reality ognized itself in the brothers’ new brand of comics.2 and fantasy, and discerning patterns in widely sepa- Yet this loyalty was sorely tested by the brothers’ rated events. Relying on the cohesiveness of the innovative approach to long-form narrative. As it total page (and the familiarity of L&R as a series) to evolved, Love & Rockets demanded much of its guide and reassure their readers, Los Bros pushed audience, as its storylines were often serialized over the tension between single image and image-in- many issues, creating long, sometimes novel-length, series to the extreme, transitioning from one ele- narratives of unprecedented depth and scope. In ment to the next without warning. fact the stories grew in length and complexity This technique, what Joseph Witek (1996) has throughout the eighties, climaxing between 1990 termed (after McCloud) “uncued closure,” pits and 1993 as Love & Rockets ran no less than three image, image-series, and page surface against each serialized graphic novels at once—a period Gilbert other. Trusting the wholeness of page and of story to has described in hindsight as “crazy” (Gaiman, clear up abrupt, nonlinear transitions, Los Bros prac- Interview 96). Such extended stories added new lay- tice the kind of breakdown demonstrated in, for ers of meaning and complication to the brothers’ example, Spiegelman’s avant-garde “drawn over respective series: Jaime’s open-ended Locas, based two weeks while on the phone,” but with more tra- on the lives of several young women in “Hoppers” ditional narrative aims. This technique opens up new (a barrio modeled on the brothers’ own hometown potentialities in terms of shifting viewpoint, narrative of Oxnard, California); and Gilbert’s Heartbreak recursion, symbolic juxtaposition, and, above all, the Soup, based in Palomar but including various other reader’s active engagement in interpretation. Los locales in Latin America and California. These vast, Bros did not adopt this habit simply to exhibit their densely populated cycles, built up over the fifty issues skill, but to pack as much hard content into their of Love & Rockets, represent long-form comics at work as possible: over the course of Love & Rockets their most ambitious. their use of uncued breakdowns responded to, and This ambition was a matter, not simply of scale, grew more and more audacious with, the growing but also of formal daring. If Love & Rockets, with its complexity of their stories. The thematic thrust of cultural scope and novelistic ambitions, extended the their work encouraged, even demanded, such for- thematic reach of American comics, it also, necessar- mal sophistication—again, the form and content of ily, reexamined the formal tensions that constitute Love & Rockets are inseparable. comics as such. In particular, Love & Rockets explored This is especially true of Gilbert’s Heartbreak the tension between the single image and the Soup, which emphasizes, first, the town of Palomar image-in-series, taking a bold approach to break- as a complex social arena or space; and second, the down that enabled Los Bros to work on a wider scale psychological development of a single family with extraordinary freedom and economy. While in (Palomar’s resident matriarch Luba and her domestic some respects both Gilbert and Jaime cleave to tradi- lineage) over a span of decades. Palomar’s teeming tional storytelling strategies—for instance, both emotional landscape, then, allows Gilbert to explore favor the rectilinear or “grid” layout followed by most the possibilities of comics as both a spatial and a Western comics—they nonetheless take a drastic temporal art. These seemingly opposite emphases, approach to narrative elision, leaping freely between on space and time, demand much from both creator

70 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP and reader; yet Heartbreak Soup, for all its formal interplay go hand in hand: insofar as Heartbreak gymnastics, maintains a strong narrative momentum Soup is about desire and disappointment (as its title and, always, a visceral urgency. Gilbert’s synoptic suggests), it argues that such feelings are gregarious. understanding of space and time, once shared by The social whirl of Palomar arises from, and sparks, the reader, allows a tremendous depth of characteri- individual passions. Indeed, individual depth and zation and feeling with a minimum of exposition. social breadth, held in balance, account for much of Narratively, Heartbreak Soup demands a complex the series’ appeal. No other series in contemporary evocation of place and history; formally, it cuts to American comics features a cast as rich, or as com- the heart of a paradox essential to comics: that time, plexly interrelated, and few focus so resolutely on in a literal sense, is space (again, see chapter 2). the complications of life among family, friends, and In fact the history of Heartbreak Soup shows two community. The beauty of Heartbreak Soup (as of overlapping arcs of development. First, Hernandez brother Jaime’s Locas series, but to an even greater achieves a thorough understanding of the myriad degree) lies not simply in its colorful individual char- social relationships within Palomar—a movement acters but also in the depth and unpredictability of that climaxes with the novel Human Diastrophism their interaction. (created 1987–89), an interrogation of individual Given this emphasis on social life, Heartbreak and social responsibilities within a densely populated Soup presented a formal challenge, namely, how to “space.” Second, Hernandez moves toward an in- focus on subtle, often unspoken emotions and rela- depth awareness of historical time and the individ- tionships without sacrificing the energy of social ual’s place in it, an arc that climaxes with the novel interaction or freighting the page heavily with expo- Poison River (1989–93), a sprawling look at the sition. This is not to insist that exposition has no intertwining of the personal and the political over a place in comics, or that all comics should move span of many years. While Heartbreak Soup is by no quickly; in fact Hernandez has sometimes resorted to means the mere sum of these developments, these extensive narration (for example, “For the Love of two foci—space and time—reveal both Hernandez’s Carmen”). But in general Heartbreak Soup depicts deep understanding of comics form and his determi- life lived on the run and catches its characters in nation to use the form for the sake of provocative medias res; readers are expected to pick up insights cultural argument. on the fly, as they eavesdrop for a moment here, a moment there. Life in Palomar, after all, is not rumi- native; the stories demand brisk movement as well FORMAL HABITS AND WHY THEY MATTER as emotional clarity. These demands had a salutary effect on Hernandez as a cartoonist, for, impelled by Heartbreak Soup is about a place and the people the complexity of Palomar, he synthesized a novel who inhabit it. As such, it focuses on the develop- approach to comics storytelling, drawing on the raw ment of the community as well as the individual, in materials of comic books, comic strips, folklore, liter- contrast to the agonistic individualism that has tradi- ature, and film. Spurred by—and in turn spurring— tionally dominated comic book fantasy. Whereas brother Jaime’s efforts, Gilbert developed a distinctive most comic books favor lone protagonists who have repertoire of techniques suited to the kind of stories been clearly set apart from society, Gilbert’s stories he wanted to tell. acknowledge, even depend upon, the energy and Building up such a repertoire, I submit, is what variousness of communal interaction. More specifi- comic artists do to harness the tensions inherent in cally, they emphasize the always complex relation- the form and turn them to advantage. The experi- ship between personal anxieties and desires and the enced cartoonist continually develops, or seeks to constraints, opportunities, and frictions of social life. develop, distinctive ways to organize this inherently For Gilbert, individual psychology and communal unstable form; in other words, each artist strives

71 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP toward his or her own formal habits, or protocols. In fact Gilbert’s style, though superficially plain, is Such protocols are ways of seeking fitness: habitual complex insofar as it reconciles naturalism with cari- means of balancing the disparate elements of comics, catural abstraction. He employs a sliding scale of so as to insure the harmony and mutual reinforce- realism, drawing some characters (for example, chil- ment of form and content. dren) broadly and wildly, but others (for example, Faced with the challenge of evoking a complex prominent adult characters) in a more restrained, social world, Hernandez developed distinctive proto- naturalistic way. Such inconsistency is of course cols in three areas: one, his approach to drawing native to the art of cartooning, but Gilbert goes fur- characters, which, while often broadly stylized, ther, at times drawing even his most realistic charac- nonetheless captures subtle nuances of expression ters with cartoony abandon, especially when they and body language; two, his panel compositions, are in the grip of strong feelings like fear or rage (a which often position characters visually within a technique common in Japanese manga but less so in dynamic social context; and three, his interpanel American comics). transitions, often abrupt and uncued, which, again, However, it is the second and third points, allow him to cover long distances (spatially and tem- Hernandez’s compositions and interpanel transitions, porally) without sacrificing either energy or coher- that most demand study. Here film theory provides ence. While none of these strategies is unique to an apt language for analysis—notwithstanding the Hernandez, his combination of them is radical, a problems presented by importing the argot of one quirky and original response to the narrative prob- discipline to another. Recent studies of comics (as lems he has set out to solve. noted in chapter 2) have resisted the comparison to The first of these three areas, his approach to film, so as to underline the specificity of the art form; drawing characters, concerns both style, that is, the yet, as Robert C. Harvey has argued, the language degree of abstractness, and technique in the strict of film can be a useful, albeit limited, tool for dis- sense, that is, the finesse of the rendering (see cussing the arrangement of elements within a Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art 151, 157). These comics panel (Art of the Funnies 17). Indeed the qualities are notoriously difficult to write about, the intuitive use of film terms has been a hallmark of more so when faced by styles as polymorphous as much comics criticism. This comics/cinema analogy, those of the Hernandez brothers. Los Bros’ distinc- admittedly inexact, has a special urgency in the case tive ways of drawing, at once naturalistic and of Hernandez, because he has often cited film as a broadly comic, were synthesized from a wide range major, perhaps the major, influence on his methods of graphic influences, most notably, the rough-hewn (see Fiore, Groth, and Powers 87–88, and Groth’s fabulism of classic Marvel artists Steve Ditko and preface to Hernandez, Chelo’s Burden). Though Jack Kirby; the coy sex appeal of Archie comics, careful to point out that he is “not a frustrated under artists Harry Lucey and Dan DeCarlo; the filmmaker,” Hernandez ranks his artistic influences understated humor of Charles Schulz and Hank as “films, other comics and then novels . . . , in that Ketcham; and the ironic, angst-filled cartooning of order” (Hernandez to the author, 22 Mar. 2000). R. Crumb. (Such eclecticism has since become one of The inevitability of the comics/cinema compari- the hallmarks of alternative comics.) Jaime, for his son, and its insufficiency, raises a larger point. part, is known as a master of stark, chiaroscuro tech- Cartoonists, as they work their way toward their nique, and has achieved a startling degree of real- own distinctive protocols, draw inspiration from (at ism; Gilbert, on the other hand, has developed a times consciously invoke) other objects, media, and wilder, more expressionistic approach, strongly influ- art forms, such as film. For instance, Spiegelman’s enced by the comic distortions of such artists as Maus (as remarked in chapter 2) invokes the materi- Ditko, Crumb, and Mad’s Harvey Kurtzman (Fiore, ality of found objects in order to stress the diaristic Groth, and Powers 98–105; Knowles 51). nature of his story: images of tickets, notebook

72 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP pages, and other printed artifacts are superimposed captures intimate exchanges, whether fierce, gentle, over Spiegelman’s characters, as if he were assem- humorous, or erotic. In particular, what I call the vis- bling a family album or scrapbook. Spiegelman is à-vis shot (that is, a close-up of two facing charac- one of many comic artists for whom layout, typogra- ters in profile) stresses the mutuality of the exchange phy, and the physical design of books are important by giving equal emphasis to both parties. signifiers in themselves—artists for whom print and Foreground framing reinforces this sense of inti- paper are privileged reference points, and the ten- macy and serves the added purpose of strengthen- sion between experience and object is paramount. In ing our sense of continuity during exchanges that contrast, Gilbert Hernandez (with rare exceptions) extend over several panels. In each panel, the “fram- downplays the idea of the object itself and indeed ing” of one figure by another (or part of another) in draws much of his inspiration from the language of the near foreground reminds us of the physical rela- movies. Despite his immersion in comics, his proto- tionship between the characters and implies a larger cols have been shaped by the signifying practices space or world “outside” the panels (for example, of film. figs. 27, 28). This protocol evokes the shot/reverse Indeed, as William Anthony Nericcio observes, shot convention of classical film editing, though Hernandez repeatedly uses and comments on “the without its restrictive emphasis on a single, consis- dynamics of cinema” (“Artif[r]acture” 95). His work tent axis of movement (the so-called 180° rule). recalls traditional narrative cinema in specific ways, Clearly, this is post-cinematic cartooning: the loom- mimicking the movie camera’s capacity for natural- ing figures in the foreground affront the picture ism, intimacy, and movement. The artist himself, plane in the same way that foregrounded figures while distinguishing between film and comics, may affront a camera’s lens. Instead of ordering his acknowledges his reliance on movies as “the best fictive world around the reader’s omniscient eye, visual reference as far as capturing a scene” (Her- Hernandez thrusts readers into the midst of intimate nandez to author), an admission that sheds light on exchanges, as if we were eavesdropping. In such his habits of panel composition. In fact Hernandez’s exchanges, he frequently uses silhouetting, filling panels favor certain filmic devices, which he uses to the outline of the foreground character with black pose characters in close relation both to the reader to simplify the composition and direct the reader’s and to each other: extreme close-ups, close two- eye to the main figure. Like the close two-shot, shots, foreground framing, and deep focus, that is, such foreground framing insists on the relationship, extreme depth of field. These protocols insure that at once spatial and emotional, between the char- the relationships among characters (and between acters, and lends variety to what could otherwise each character and the whole of Palomar) are estab- become repetitive, numbing sequences full of talking lished and upheld with absolute clarity. heads. Individual close-ups and two-shots enable Likewise, Hernandez’s depth of field emphasizes Hernandez to capture his characters’ most intense the complexity of the larger social milieu of Palomar. emotions, whether openly displayed or barely con- In “deep focus”—I am using the photographic term cealed behind carefully composed façades. The indi- metaphorically, of course—interactions can take vidual close-up allows such recurrent devices as place across wide distances; the “space” between direct asides to the reader (used sparingly early on, foreground and background characters can establish later abandoned) and blank, silent panels revealing the complexity of a setting, or underscore the emo- lone characters in unguarded moments of reaction tions of an interchange (for example, characters shout- or contemplation. In a strip whose principals are usu- ing angrily across a distance, or keeping their distance ally shown in motion, such still moments serve as from each other). In fact Heartbreak Soup is filled dramatic punctuation, offering revealing snapshots with such “deep” images, panels in which elements of individual character. Similarly, the two-shot on different planes are unobtrusively combined,

73 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP sometimes to score a specific narrative point, often enable Hernandez to keep track of the overlapping simply to evoke the variety and unpredictability of relationships within his ever-expanding repertory Palomar as a place (for example, fig. 26). This habit- company of characters. ual use of deep focus helps to create not only a spatial but also a social context. If Palomar does come to life as a place, as a thoroughly imagined and imagi- BUILDING UP PALOMAR nable world, it is partly because Hernandez’s multiplane compositions provide a perfect graphic setting Heartbreak Soup’s emphasis on these relationships is for his interest in community. evident from the very first story in the cycle, “Sopa In short, Hernandez’s panel compositions reflect de Gran Pena” (Love & Rockets No. 3–4, 1983; his themes. Yet, in addition, his focus on community Palomar 13–57).3 While “Sopa” hinges on a tragic influences the way he breaks down stories into pan- love triangle between Manuel, Soledad, and Pipo, els, that is, the way he handles the tensions between it also introduces the mysterious bañadora (bath- image and image-series and between sequence and giver) Luba, and highlights the friendship between page surface. An analogy to cinema may again “the guys,” a group of adolescent boys composed prove useful, but in this case it is the failure of the of Vicente, Satch, Israel, Jesus, and the newcomer analogy that helps: while breakdown is roughly Heraclio. The adult lives of these men, covered in comparable to cinematic editing or montage, it dif- such later tales as “The Laughing Sun,” will account fers insofar as the page gathers multiple images into for much of Heartbreak Soup’s continuity; in “Sopa,” a single surface, a static unit of meaning through however, the relationships that bind the five together which the reader can move at will. As Heartbreak are as yet tentative and only part of a larger web of Soup progresses, Hernandez capitalizes more and social connections. This larger context includes many more on this static, readable quality, relying on the relationships (for example, Carmen and Pipo, Luba integrity of the overall page to clarify drastic “cut- and Chelo) that will figure more prominently in the ting” or ellipsis. Though powerfully influenced by stories ahead. cinema, he trumps traditional narrative film by The complexity of such interlocking relationships favoring abrupt, unsignaled cuts and interpolations becomes clear in the story “Ecce Homo” (Love & between images. On screen, such jarring cuts (though Rockets No. 10, 1984; Palomar 145–60). “Ecce increasingly common) are still most often used for Homo” takes place at a town picnic or similar gather- the sake of visceral shock; they conjure sudden, dising and shows Hernandez’s secure grasp of Palomar orienting flashbacks or visions, momentarily jeopard- as a community. Here Borro, the ex-sheriff of izing clarity and coherence. Yet such transitions Palomar, reappears, virtually reinvented since his early make perfect sense in the printed medium of the appearance in “Sopa”; here Tonantzin Villaseñor, only comics page, for print, as McCloud points out, allows briefly glimpsed before, is reintroduced and deep- before and after to remain ever-visible, ever-present, ened, her promiscuity and desperate need for self- elements (104). The static nature of comics permits a affirmation revealed. The relationship between Pipo self-paced reading, slow or fast according to the and her abusive husband Gato (an ironic reversal of reader’s desires, even recursive if need be, which his unrequited longings in “Sopa”) brings added allows Hernandez to make sudden cuts between tension and complexity. The coterie of male friends panels without sacrificing the continuity or the easy, established in “Sopa” remains more or less intact, unassuming naturalism of his stories. This technique, apart from Jesus (now a convict), but their rela- Witek’s “uncued closure,” responds to and becomes tionships have grown and changed, and Heraclio’s bolder with the growing complexity of Hernandez’s role has become more central. “Ecce Homo” is a story cycle. Combined with the compositional strate- pageant of Palomar’s citizenry, driven not by any gies described above, such abrupt breakdowns particular plot or crisis but rather by the various

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relationships that Hernandez wants to establish, do a number of non-Love and Rockets “charac- re-establish, or underline. As such, the story exploits ters”—for example, Frida Kahlo, R. Crumb, Gilbert Hernandez’s arsenal of narrative techniques to the Hernandez and his wife, Carol Kovinick-Hernandez, fullest (fig. 26). and several skeletons inspired by Jose Guadalupe Reading “Ecce Homo,” one has the feeling of Posada.) Thus, as we wander through the Palomar roving through a large party, encountering and later scene, eavesdropping on its featured players, we re-encountering various characters whose ties to also glimpse other visitors to this fictive world, fanci- each other are just beginning to come to light. ful visitors who remind us that we too are merely Blending the many elements of Heartbreak Soup’s peeking into something larger and more complex. At continuity into an organic whole, “Ecce” solidifies once we are swept into the life of Palomar, yet our sense of the town’s collective identity. The story reminded of our visitor status. allows us to “stroll” through the scene, taking in “Ecce Homo” tells much that we must know if relationships that connect the various characters to we are to understand the relationships and issues at each other. Indeed, “Ecce” contains playful elements stake in later stories. Here for the first time Luba’s that suggest that Hernandez is not only taking roll eldest daughter, Maricela, emerges as a distinct but taking stock of all that has happened in Love and character, and we learn, albeit indirectly, that Luba Rockets thus far. Besides the casts of Heartbreak abuses her. Here we witness Tonantzin falling prey Soup and other Gilbert stories, various characters to male flattery and in effect prostituting herself to drawn by brothers Jaime and Mario make cameos. shore up her uncertain sense of self-worth. Here too (In fact most of Jaime’s major characters appear, as we see Borro’s crude advances on Luba and his

75 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP willingness to strike out violently when his desires reality, memory, and vision, as when, for example, are thwarted. Beneath the apparent frivolity of the Guadalupe’s fond memories of her mother give way cameos and the drunken good humor of characters to a more frightening vision of Luba, which in turn like Heraclio are undercurrents of tension—dark gives way to the reality of Tonantzin shaking the and disturbing elements that will emerge most fully bleary, vomiting child (281). Again, Hernandez’s in later tales. (As in Posada, so here: light and dark- handling of form responds to the dramatic demands ness, vitality and death, not only coexist but join of his narrative. As the scattered members of his cast hands.) converge on the same moment of confrontation “Ecce Homo” represents a stretch for Hernandez (fig. 27), his breakdowns grow more ambitious, the the cartoonist, as it packs an entire town into sixteen transitions more abrupt, leaping unexpectedly from pages. Here his compositional and breakdown tech- (in McCloudian terms) subject to subject and action niques are in constant practice, choreographing the to action. The breakdown of action and the design interplay between at least two dozen established of the entire page reinforce each other: narrow pan- characters (again, see fig. 26). The approach is cine- els crowd together, creating a staccato rhythm, matic, yes, but also succinct, graphically playful, and, which climaxes with discovery, violence, deliverance, as ever, wonderfully cartoony. Two-shots, foreground and relief. framing, silhouetting, shot/reverse shot exchanges, The final page of “Duck Feet” (fig. 28), a quiet and deep-focus compositions depict the complex dénouement after a frantic tale, is as radical a move social workings of Palomar, with its mingled friend- as anything that has come before. An even grid of ships, loves, lusts, antagonisms, and misunderstand- nine wordless panels, each one showing a different ings. Throughout “Ecce,” Hernandez maintains subject, suggests the apparent calm that has settled continuity of action, yet achieves a startling graphic over Palomar in the wake of the epidemic, and tells repleteness and variety, as well as subtle emotional us what has become of all of the featured characters nuances—all the while positioning foreground and in the story. Disconnected as the images are, they background details to suggest an impinging social reveal what we need to know about each character context. and the town as a whole. In the first panel, for If “Ecce Homo” romps through Hernandez’s imag- instance, we see the outside of Luba’s house, where, inary world, then the two-part story “Duck Feet” we know, Luba and Guadalupe are convalescing, (Love & Rockets Nos. 17–18, 1986; Palomar 259–86) while in the second and third panels we see the rest shakes this world to its foundations. Struck by an of her family at work. Panels four and seven, one epidemic brought on by the wrath of a disgruntled right above the other, show the sisters, Tonantzin bruja (witch), the Palomar of “Duck Feet” reveals a and Diana, respectively: Tonantzin has been heretofore unknown potential for violence: Sheriff changed most by recent events, and seems lost in Chelo inadvertently kills the fugitive Roberto, and thought, unconcerned with the masculine brawl the headstrong Tonantzin, acting as Chelo’s deputy, going on (no doubt for her favor) behind her; Diana, is later assaulted by Roberto’s gun-wielding cousin below, seems to be running to escape from thinking. Geraldo. Meanwhile, Luba remains stuck in the bot- In the penultimate panel we see Geraldo, confined tom of a hole, despite her daughter Guadalupe’s to prison, his bandaged arm a reminder of the tale’s anxious efforts to free her. As the epidemic sweeps violence, while the last panel shows the retreat of the town, many characters are physically trans- the mysterious bruja, ending the story on a question formed, their features grotesquely mottled, even dis- mark. Here transitioning from image to image (that torted, by the symptoms of the disease. Several scenes is, resolving the tension between single image and take on a frankly nightmarish quality, as Guadalupe image-series) requires divining a pattern from a stumbles through the streets, retching and halluci- string of apparent non sequiturs, silent and open to nating. Hernandez’s breakdowns seamlessly blend interpretation.

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THE COMMUNITY IN CRISIS: HUMAN core periodical readership. Sharp, unsentimental, and DIASTROPHISM complex, Human Diastrophism represents a mile- stone in Hernandez’s depiction of Palomar as social Thematically and formally, the novel-length Human space and a pivotal moment of self-reflexive exami- Diastrophism (Love & Rockets Nos. 21–26, 1987–88; nation, as he interrogates the social and political effec- Palomar 320–424) trumps “Duck Feet” by placing tiveness of comic art. The novel stands as one of the the town in the grips of an even greater crisis. This signal examples of alternative comics from the 1980s. genuine graphic novel, subsequently revised and Diastrophism echoes “Sopa de Gran Pena” in collected in the book Blood of Palomar (1989), many ways, recalling or reworking some of its basic tested the serial magazine form of Love & Rockets themes and motifs. However, unlike the bucolic set- as never before, summing up and extending Heart- ting of “Sopa,” the Palomar of Diastrophism seethes break Soup with few expository concessions to its with anxiety, its fragile community jeopardized by

78 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP violence, political terror, and disintegrating relation- Riri, with whom she has been pursuing a clandestine ships. Here Hernandez creates his most complex net- lesbian affair. Luba, oblivious to all but her own need work of interactions, pushing his techniques to the for affirmation, remains aloof to Palomar’s social utmost to capture the way individual behavior affects crisis, unaware of the very complexities on which the social dynamic. Indeed the crux of Diastrophism is Hernandez’s narrative technique insists. the question of personal responsibility for the social Meanwhile, Tonantzin worries her family and good, yet ironically much of its dramatic tension stems friends with prophetic talk of an impending holo- from characters who remain unaware of, or unmoved caust. Set off by the paranoiac writings of the convict by, the needs of the community as a whole. Geraldo (the very man who assaulted her in “Duck Broadly speaking, Diastrophism depicts traumatic Feet”), Tonantzin sees Palomar as a fragile pawn changes that overtake Palomar and its citizens, in a struggle between global superpowers, and her changes triggered by the intrusion of the outside mind is filled with images of the apocalypse. Despite world into the previously cloistered village. The most the well-meaning interference of friends and family, obvious public crisis in the novel is the search for a Tonantzin adopts the traditional garb of her Indian serial murderer at large in the town, whose random ancestors in a vain effort to make a “political state- attacks strike up a panic in Palomar’s intimate popu- ment” (352). Inadvertently, she too provides the lation. As the search for the killer gathers steam, and townspeople with much-needed distraction, a bitter the panic escalates, a horde of mischievous monkeys irony given her lone commitment to meaningful appears out of nowhere and sweeps the town like an social action. epidemic, attacking people and vandalizing houses. Tonantzin’s sudden politicization underlines her As omens of the encroaching modern world, the long-established naiveté. Named for the Aztec monkeys symbolize the townspeople’s fears, yet also mother goddess, Tonantzin (“Revered Mother”) is provide a cathartic outlet for, and welcome distrac- nonetheless an object of gossip and ridicule in the tion from, those fears. Hence the townspeople set town. She bears the onus of a scandalous past, includ- about killing and cremating them in earnest. The ing, ironically enough, a series of abortions resulting resulting mayhem, at once risibly comic and brutally from her prodigal sexuality. As vendor of the local graphic, underscores the novel’s prevailing tone of dietary staple, fried babosas (slugs), Tonantzin pro- violence and hysteria. vides for her people much like her mythic namesake; Within this climate of terror, many of Palomar’s yet, as established in “Ecce Homo” and later stories individual citizens undergo diastrophic (roughly, such as “An American in Palomar” and “Duck Feet,” “earth-shaking”) changes in their own lives. Most her character has a tragic dimension. Ill-educated and notably, Luba (by now familiar as a single mother of lacking both confidence and purpose, she is credu- four and the proprietor of the local bathhouse) pur- lous, rash, and easily manipulated. Diastrophism sues her own fleeting youth in the person of Khamo, finds her seeking a new purpose in life but at the an old lover and the father of two of her children. behest of Geraldo, a millenarian religious zealot. The Khamo has returned to town unexpectedly as a very inadequacy of Tonantzin’s would-be “political worker in an archaeological dig—ironically, the same statement” makes it almost unbearably poignant. dig that has brought the killer to town (though, In contrast to Tonantzin, Humberto (a new char- unlike Khamo, the killer is a returning Palomar acter) rejects direct social action, seeking instead to native). Luba’s family, already strained by her neg- take part in the life of the town obliquely, through lect, begins to unravel as her affair with Khamo the medium of his art. An aspiring young artist, revives, then falters, shattering her confidence and Humberto struggles to educate himself, and indeed driving her into a series of aimless sexual encounters. redefine himself, by mastering the craft of drawing. In particular, Luba’s daughter Maricela, driven by her He becomes a vehicle for Hernandez’s own searching mother’s violent abuse, plots to leave Palomar with self-examination. Thus, as Nericcio has argued, the

79 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP novel becomes partly “a Bildungsroman of a strug- While eavesdropping with his drawing tablet in gling neophyte artist—Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister hand, he witnesses the killer Tomaso’s attempted re-imagined pen in hand south of the border” murder of the young woman Chancla (fig. 29). (99–100). Thanks to the patronage of Heraclio, Haunted by images of the stabbing, Humberto does Palomar’s resident teacher, Humberto is suddenly not come forward to testify as to what he has seen, immersed in the work of his artistic forebears (Van but instead withdraws into a world of his own, in Gogh, Picasso, Munch, Modigliani, and others), a which he compulsively replays the event over and dunking that proves at once inspiring and intimidat- over by drawing it. In one panel, we see him lying ing. “I had no idea they had gone this far . . . that naked, arms spread as if he is being crucified; the you could go this far,” he muses. “What have I been light from a window above casts a shadowy cross doing?” (336). Thus immersed, Humberto must over his body, as he lies on what appear to be pages grapple with a particularly acute case of the anxiety from his drawing tablet (fig. 30). Zooming in for a of influence. Galvanized and frightened, he now close-up, Hernandez emphasizes Humberto’s eyes, sees everything through the lens of his art. which are now sunken, shadowed, and staring, as if It is Humberto and Luba, both emotionally iso- fixed on a single object. From here on, Humberto’s lated characters, who serve as focal points for Her- eyes, often shaded or distorted, will be his most promi- nandez’s exploration of social responsibility. Neither nent characteristic. A later panel, thrust between seems aware of the ripples of consequence spread- two scenes without explanation, underscores this, ing from his/her actions. Luba struggles to salvage showing Humberto retching into a toilet, his sunken, her confidence after losing her hold on Khamo, bloodshot eyes revealing a nausea as much psycho- heedless of the town’s disintegration. Just so, logical as physical (357). Still later pages emphasize Humberto tries desperately to improve his art and to the likeness between Humberto’s eyes and the define its social place and value, regardless of the eyes of the monkeys terrorizing the town (368, 375). chaos erupting around him. As Luba puts herself and Thus the artist’s eyes, his means of observing the her family at risk through her random sexual liaisons world, also become the outward sign of his trauma. (including one with the killer), so Humberto puts Humberto is scarred by his own attempt to play the himself and others at risk through his single-minded role of dispassionate observer. dedication to his art. From this point on, Humberto creates disturbed and violent images that suggest a struggle to assimi- late the events in Palomar into his art. Now town “MY WORK SPEAKS FOR ITSELF” characters such as Luba and Tonantzin are even more wildly distorted than usual in his drawings Humberto’s desire to improve is prompted not only (367); now he sketches the killer with an angelic by the well-meaning patronage of Heraclio but also halo, or a beatific smile (364, 398). As he grapples by his desperate need to learn how to draw “for with the anxiety of influence, fanned by knowledge real”—that is, to improve his craft—before he of his artistic forebears, Humberto also grapples with breaks the rules. This need is impressed on him by the violence that threatens to tear his world apart. his occasional companion Augustin, who insists that This double confrontation unleashes a flood of Humberto’s work is “fast and sloppy and fake” frightening imagery from his pencil. (344). Spurred by Augustin’s criticisms, Humberto Hernandez incorporates Humberto’s images into resolves that he must learn to draw realistically, from his own, many of them homages to such famed life, before he can do “stuff as good and wild as artists as Picasso and Munch (for example, 343, them real artists” (346). Unfortunately, Humberto’s 367). At the same time, Hernandez himself swipes quest to draw “for real” exposes him to a third liberally from these artists (for example, 396). These influence, one that forever alters his life and his art. homages conflate Hernandez and Humberto, author

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Figure 29. “Human Diastrophism.” Palomar 347 (excerpt). © 2004 Gilbert Hernandez. Used with permission. and character. For example, a Picassoesque, Cubist and probes the issue of the artist’s social liability. rendering of Luba on the cover of Love & Rockets Indeed, if Human Diastrophism were to have an epi- No. 21 (also the back cover of the collected Blood of graph, it might well be Susan Sontag’s dictum, “The Palomar) serves as both an introduction to Hernandez’s person who intervenes cannot record; the person opus and a suggestive sample of Humberto’s work, who is recording cannot intervene” (On Photography underlining the ambitions of both (fig. 31). These intel- 12). This potent aphorism, culled from Sontag’s water- ligent swipes suggest a complex relationship between, shed critique of photos and photo-making, implicitly in T. S. Eliot’s Modernist formulation, tradition and the calls into question the efficacy of all artistic media. individual talent, while the narrative itself probes the Sontag redefines the camera, not as a window open social consequences of that relationship (consequences to the world but as a screen that can shield its user so often neglected in Modernist orthodoxy). from direct contact with, and responsibility for, the Through Humberto, Hernandez reasserts those world. More broadly, her argument challenges us to consequences. More precisely, he questions the think about the responsibilities of artists to the world power of art to intervene in social and political crises, they strive to document.

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This question of art’s political accountability stems personal responsibility for the townspeople, the from the inevitable conflict between activism and unknowing subjects of his art (362). By this point he aestheticism: Can an artist give plastic form to politi- has completely withdrawn from social contact. cal concerns, without aestheticizing and thus neu- His withdrawal has a dire effect on himself and tralizing those concerns? Can art usefully intervene the community. Though Humberto alone possesses in social crises? With characteristic audacity, Hernan- the secret of the killer’s identity, he cannot or at least dez delivers this challenge via the unexpected does not divulge it, choosing instead to paper the vehicle of the comics magazine, a mass-produced, town with drawings of the killer, in hopes that his collectible artifact. More explicitly than his previous work will testify for him. Obsessed with becoming a stories, Diastrophism examines the social responsi- great artist, Humberto cannot intervene directly in bilities of all artists (implicitly including comic artists) the public crisis but tries to influence events through and presages a growing self-consciousness in his his drawings alone, guided by his belief that “great work. Thus the novel takes a pivotal position in art reveals the deepest truths” (390). When con- that work. fronted with his drawings, he refuses to explicitly Humberto himself is self-conscious to a fault. His identify the culprit, claiming, “My work speaks for art becomes his world—and it is an ugly world itself” (386). Unfortunately, his refusal to testify ver- indeed, as we see when Luba, stood up by Khamo, bally allows Tomaso to go free, and to kill others; ducks into Humberto’s house to escape from the thus his art proves not enough to stem the chaos drizzling rain. When Luba remarks that his art is and social collapse taking place around him. “ugly as hell,” Humberto replies curtly, “How else Ultimately, Humberto becomes a pariah, cast out of do you expect someone to draw hell.” Goaded by Hernandez’s carefully constructed society for his her intrusion, he claims not to care about anyone, refusal to act. Through Humberto, then, Hernandez thus rejecting any form of human connection, any attacks the artist’s traditional presumptive role as a

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marginal or elevated social observer, and questions Humberto’s potential to turn necessity to advantage the social efficacy of art itself. and once again challenge his community through This question grows even more urgent as the novel his art, this time freed of any social constraints reaches its end (reader be warned: a big spoiler or “expectations.” The proposed mural (implicitly, a follows). On the final page, Humberto and Augustin graphic narrative, like comics) not only reminds us of meet again, and once again the talk is about art Humberto’s sketches of the killer but also recalls, (fig. 32). Humberto, despised and forlorn, despairs first, the revolutionary political muralismo of such of drawing ever again, but Augustin, unpretentious Mexican artists as Siqueiros and Rivera, both of as ever, urges him to help paint a mural that, as whom are mentioned early in the novel (325), and Augustin puts it, will “kick everybody’s ass” (424). second, the comic book form itself, which has tradi- Symbolically, the prospect of the mural suggests tionally been unburdened by high expectations. By

84 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP suggesting such a public and narrative form, Cathy’s position as spectator is our own. Shocked Augustin holds out the possibility that art can still by televised images of real-life violence, she doesn’t rock the world, can still challenge and change the know how to respond. Revealingly, she likens “this status quo. Humberto is intrigued by his friend’s girl” to “monks” burning themselves in some of offer, but their conversation is suddenly interrupted Howard’s photographs (an allusion, presumably, to by a snowstorm of white ash that falls from the Malcolm Browne’s photos of a Vietnamese bonze heavens, blanketing the town. This ash, prophesied burning himself in protest against the Diem regime in earlier in the novel, symbolizes an act of sacrifice June 1963—a defining example of the relationship that tries to go beyond talk or art—a sacrifice that between photojournalist and subject). Cathy then has already happened, though Humberto and tries to distance herself from the event, wondering if Augustin know nothing about it. the girl was “crazy” to do something so “extreme.” In reply, Howard suggests that she may simply have been someone “deeply hurt from seeing the world “TALK OR ART OR PROPAGANDA JUST ISN’T around them go to shit,” but confesses that, in this ENOUGH” girl’s case, “he wouldn’t know” (423). (Though he should know, in this girl’s case.) Then he argues that, It is the now-politicized Tonantzin who offers up this based on what he has seen with his own eyes, there sacrifice, in witness to an unspecified cause. Three are times when “talk or art or propaganda just isn’t pages before the novel’s end, Tonantzin is glimpsed enough,” when love motivates people to make such beneath a tree that the townspeople call Pintor’s sacrifices for the sake of change. His words have the Tree, under which ghosts are believed to gather (as air of sincerity, and his simple statement, “that’s just shown as far back as “Sopa de Gran Pena”). Yet she the way I feel,” seems sympathetic. has already left Palomar with Luba’s erstwhile lover, Yet, in the final panel of the novel’s penultimate Khamo. The reader, thus alerted, begins to suspect page, Howard Miller slips effortlessly from these that something has happened to Tonantzin out there feelings to the question that has really been occupy- in the larger world (421). Yet Hernandez, in a telling ing his thoughts: the success of a new photographic comment on our media-dependence, reveals her “effect” that he has been trying out. In other words, actual fate only indirectly, through a television screen Art is still his immediate concern. He asks Cathy’s as seen by American eyes. The transition is sudden, opinion but receives no immediate reply. Cathy is unexpected: disturbed by what she has just seen, as her faraway Somewhere north of the border, photojournalist expression suggests, whereas Howard is inured to it Howard Miller steps from his darkroom (fig. 33). His all and able to segue easily from appalling tragedy to girlfriend, Cathy, watching TV news, recounts with questions of technique. Thus Howard’s dialogue in horror the self-immolation of “this girl” involved in the preceding panels rings false, his concern as “this protest in front of some embassy somewhere” insubstantial and inconstant as a fleeting TV image. (422). Pointing to the screen, Cathy retells the Far from connecting him with the tragedy of what event, her voiceover commentary serving as sound- Cathy has witnessed (and what he himself, presum- track for a series of panels that reveal the girl’s ably, has witnessed time and again), Howard’s sacrifice. Code versus code, image versus word— camera—his window on the world—has shielded Cathy’s uncomprehending monologue accompanies him from feeling. successive images of Tonantzin’s burning (we see This brutal coda resonates with Humberto’s ear- Khamo trying to save her). Miller, ugly-American lier abdication of responsibility and gives the novel a protagonist of the earlier story, “An American in shattering thematic punch. Hernandez implies that, Palomar,” has no idea that “this girl” is a girl he once while art may open up new worlds to our appreciation, wooed and exploited: Tonantzin. it can also insulate us from tragedy by aestheticizing

86 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP it, turning it into a series of images and objects for formal rhythms become more intense, its break- our consumption. This is precisely the dilemma out- downs bolder and more elaborate, in response to the lined by Sontag, when she refers to taking photo- town’s mounting hysteria. In the novel’s last third, graphs as a way of refusing as well as certifying having established the overlapping relationships experience (9); it is precisely the problem dramatized among the characters, Hernandez shifts gears rap- by Humberto’s art. Can images, removed from expe- idly, jumping from one relationship or plotline to the rience, wake us up to what is happening in the next. As in “Ecce Homo” and “Duck Feet,” again, world, or do they merely inoculate us, deadening the community of Palomar takes on a life of its own, our sensibilities and numbing our empathy? growing ever more frenzied and complex. The last page of the book, again, suggests the Early in the novel, Hernandez uses fluid and revolutionary potential of art, but threatens to unsurprising transitions from panel to panel and sub- smother that hope under a blizzard of ash, a sym- ject to subject, in order to show the essential con- bolic reminder of Tonantzin’s seemingly futile sacri- nectedness of all the goings-on in Palomar. Economy fice (424). As the clouded sky fills with flecks of ash, and restraint are the bywords here, as Hernandez the word “FIN,” superimposed over the last panel, minimizes the tension between single image and gives the novel an apocalyptic finality—no less dev- image-series. For instance, in a three-page sequence astating for the knowledge that, yes, okay, there will early in the novel (324–26), Hernandez quietly rein- be future Palomar stories. (In fact some of my stu- troduces a number of significant characters, estab- dents, unfamiliar with the larger arc of Heartbreak lishes several relationships and plotlines that will Soup, have interpreted this apocalypse quite literally propel the story, and underlines some of the essen- as the end of the world.) The ending reeks of despair. tial themes that will give it its peculiar resonance. He Despite this, Human Diastrophism leaves room to does all this without once making a sudden shift hope for an ambitious, socially responsive comic art, from scene to scene; rather, he follows several char- one that can indeed “kick everybody’s ass.” In fact, acters through the streets of Palomar, easing the Diastrophism seems to have energized Hernandez, reader from one encounter to the next by changing daring him to push even harder: having violated the depth and perspective and by repositioning key sheltered world of Palomar this way, he pressed on characters vis-à-vis each other. This sequence is without flinching. After a brief respite from long- remarkably smooth, knit together by exchanges of form work,4 his next novels, Poison River and Love angle that mimic the shot/reverse shot continuity of and Rockets X, continued to explore the political tur- traditional cinema, as well as shifts from foreground moil and social unease confronted in Diastrophism. to background figures, variations in distance (long, Thus Hernandez challenged his fellow comic artists medium, and close-up shots), and even spoken cues to seek greater cultural and political relevance. from off-panel characters. Transitions are subtly reinforced by such devices as foreground framing and silhouetting (for detailed discussion, see Hatfield). ACCELERATING FORMAL RHYTHMS In contrast, key sequences later in the novel shift from subject to subject with daring abruptness, If Human Diastrophism is, in the end, a meditation reflecting the town’s growing panic and the story’s on the power or impotence of art as a social instru- surging momentum. In particular, an extraordinary ment, it is also, not coincidentally, a rigorous test sequence two-thirds into the novel (383–85) of comic art’s ability to depict complex social ratchets up the tension between single image and interaction—not to mention a bravura exercise of image-series to the extreme, capturing the growing Hernandez’s narrative skills. In fact its very form frenzy of activity in the town. Starting with an aerial insists on the social connectedness that Humberto view of Palomar, labeled “ground zero,” Hernandez tries to deny. Thus, as the novel progresses, its moves the reader rapidly through a fragmented

87 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP three-page sequence that pushes several plotlines to that weds formal complexity to thematic ambition. the breaking point (Hatfield). This frenetic passage (Collected in 1994, it remains notorious among fans effectively translates Hernandez’s fascination with as his most tangled and difficult work.) Set outside film into print; indeed the novel’s accelerating rhythms Palomar, the novel covers not only a wide geograph- call to mind the struggle, in classical film theory, ical area but also a span of at least nineteen years in between the aesthetics of the fluid shot (mis-en-scene, the life of Luba, from infancy to young womanhood. à la Bazin) and the aesthetics of montage (editing, à la Thus it trumps Hernandez’s bold use of time Eisenstein). Such sequences, not simply grandstanding throughout Heartbreak Soup, intensifying his use of displays of technique, respond to Hernandez’s abiding abrupt shifts and narrative fragmentation, but now interest in the complexity and simultaneity of commu- with a new focus. Here Hernandez concentrates less nal life, whether in peace or in crisis. Their formal inge- on the life of a community, more on the complex nuity serves his overarching themes. interweaving of past and present circumstances Conversely, Hernandez’s thematic interests reflect, (familial, cultural, and political) in a single life. Time is and evidently were shaped by, his mastery of comics Poison River’s chief variable, and conveying its pas- form: Gradually the stories in Heartbreak Soup sage becomes the supreme test of Hernandez’s skill. responded to his growing fluency in the form, as By this time, Luba has clearly emerged as notions of time, memory, and repetition became Heartbreak Soup’s most complexly developed female thematically central. In short, the influence of con- character, thus the central character in Hernandez’s tent and form proved reciprocal. As the above- woman-centered universe. Whereas Human Dias- mentioned techniques enabled characters to interact trophism captures a crucial moment in Luba’s public on a vast scale, without sacrificing the vivid singularity transformation from disreputable bañadora to mayor, of each, they prompted ever larger and more complex Poison River fills in the harrowing story of her early narrative structures, culminating in the demand- life and thus compels the cartoonist to shuttle back ing multigenerational epic Poison River (Love & and forth through history. In this case, Hernandez’s Rockets Nos. 29–40, 1989–93) and subsequent sto- aim seems not so much a broad social canvas as a ries, where non-chronological inserts and indeed psychological depth-sounding. River is “Luba’s story.” non-linear sequences are common. Poison River, not Or is it? In fact, the novel does not really force a coincidentally, exceeded the limits of Palomar, giving choice between breadth and depth; it does not insist Hernandez a much wider geographical and cultural on an either/or. Poison River, for all its emphasis on stage on which to play out his increasingly baroque Luba, takes place in a minutely detailed political narrative gambits. (Therefore it does not appear in environment, one that continually impinges on the single-volume Palomar.) River’s scope and com- Luba’s life. This looming sense of context prevents plexity, as we shall see, enabled him to extend the Hernandez (and his readers) from focusing too nar- searching self-criticism begun in Diastrophism and rowly on Luba’s psyche. Indeed Poison River refuses to sharpen his satiric political vision. Unfortunately to settle on Luba exclusively and often pushes her to its complexity also undermined its success as a serial, the periphery of the action. Her psychological forcing Hernandez into a period of artistic and com- growth occurs in a tense, crowded milieu, geograph- mercial crisis. ically vast, shaped by both petty personal concerns and the huge, transpersonal forces of history. Both Luba and her world are in flux. Moreover, POISON RIVER: IT’S A MAN’S MAN’S MAN’S Hernandez uses radical shifts in time to insist on the WORLD intermingling of the personal and political. In this sense Poison River marks the climax of a Poison River represents the apogee of Hernandez’s developmental arc that starts much earlier, for art to date, a dense, aggressive, and disturbing novel Hernandez’s fluid sense of time began as far back as

88 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP the second Heartbreak Soup story, “Act of Contrition” key character (for example, Luba’s cousin Ofelia; her (Love & Rockets Nos. 5–7, 1984; Palomar 71–103). father, Eduardo; her father-in-law, Fermin) at several Chronologically, “Act” takes place years after the first different points in his/her life: in childhood, adoles- tale, “Sopa de Gran Pena,” and the vague span of cence, middle age, and various points in between. time between them includes Luba’s move from a van Luba herself is spotlighted twice, first as the youthful to a more permanent home, her establishment of “Lubita,” a diminutive nickname given by her hus- Palomar’s one and only cinema, and the births of three band (chapter 6), and later as the older “Luba” of her daughters (whose fathers remain a mystery until (chapter 17). This fluid sense of time affects the much later). “Act” also introduces telling details about entire narrative: sudden shifts in time occur fre- Luba’s past, such as her habit of nightclubbing during quently, and, two-thirds of the way in, an abrupt, her teens—an allusion to Luba’s jaunts with her friends sixteen-page flashback (not signaled as such) cru- Lucy and Pepa, as later recounted in Poison River. cially replays some of the earlier events in the novel (Indeed, a picture of the three women in “Act” antici- from a new perspective. pates precisely a panel from River drawn some seven Poison River, in short, is a tangle—just as Luba’s to eight years later.) By opening such gaps between life is confused, complicated, and dangerous. To stories, Hernandez was able to sketch in the history of explain why, Hernandez ultimately focuses on the his characters gradually through interpolated flash- enigma of her mother’s identity. Luba’s mother backs, a technique that became central to his work. Maria, seen in Poison River for the first time, turns Starting with “Act,” he moved with growing confi- out to be a beautiful cipher—a voluptuous feminine dence between the “present” and the “past,” tracing trophy who, strangely, becomes the key to two gen- what in hindsight seems a clear progress: from the erations of intrigue involving a cadre of Latin gang- overdetermined transitions in “The Reticent Heart” sters. Young Luba, who has never known her (Love & Rockets No. 12, 1985; Palomar 165–75), a mother, unwittingly becomes linked to the gangsters tale that bluntly labels its flashback as such, to the fluid by marrying one of Maria’s former lovers, the gang- mingling of memory, dream, and reality in “Holidays in ster/musician Peter Rio (whose surname, of course, the Sun” (Love & Rockets No. 15, 1986; Palomar means “river”). Thus Luba is burdened by her 215–28). In the course of these few stories, Hernandez mother’s past liaisons. Just so, all the novel’s charac- learned to manipulate time with greater elegance and ters are connected by a chain of circumstances, a rio freedom, and developed the habit of interpolating venono (poison river) of consequences. memories and visions sans verbal cues. By Poison Poison River is notable not only for its nonlinear River he had achieved a narrative economy in which structure but also for its overall tone. The novel is past and present interpenetrate to a startling degree. harsh, often brutal, and in some ways hardly seems a If Heartbreak Soup is marked by Hernandez’s part of Heartbreak Soup. Though focused on Luba, ability to age his characters believably—to capture it takes place outside Palomar and builds a vast net- them at different times in their lives—then River rep- work of new, carefully shaded but generally corrupt resents his most complex achievement along these characters, centered on Peter Rio. Peter is at the lines. Here he fills in Luba’s life prior to settling in heart of a whirlwind of criminal and political activity, Palomar, beginning in infancy, and at last brings her which spans two generations and affects the lives of (and her daughter Maricela and cousin Ofelia) to the Maria and Luba in complex ways. His world is shock- outskirts of Palomar, just prior to the events of ingly different from the matriarchal retreat of “Sopa de Gran Pena.” What’s more, every featured Palomar, for Poison River surveys the political land- player in Poison River emerges as a complex charac- scape of postcolonial Latin America in general, offer- ter with his/her own past and individual strengths ing a dauntingly complex critique of the intersections and weaknesses. In the revised, collected edition of between crime, political counterinsurgency, sex, and the novel, the title page of each chapter shows one sexism. A harrowing story, River echoes the real-life

89 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP tales of conspiracy, terrorism, and drug trafficking Salas. Luba, fearful of discovery by Peter, only takes that by now infect our view of Latin America’s rela- the needle between her toes, but nonetheless tionship to the United States (tales in which the becomes a regular user. In fact her drug-using United States is very much implicated, as Hernandez episodes with Lucy and Pepa erupt in a kind of bac- reminds us). chanalian excess, as the women cavort through Though ostensibly Luba’s biography, Poison River Peter’s home in the nude, their bodies painted with takes place in a man’s world, in which women are to words and symbols, Pepa brandishing the needle like be protected and excluded from the vicissitudes of a dagger (90). Thus they enliven their everyday lives “business.” Luba herself, as in “Duck Feet” and as prisoners of a domestic ideal that forces them into Human Diastrophism, remains largely unaware of dependence and ignorance. Terrified that Peter will what’s going on. Paternalistic chauvinism runs ram- discover her drug use, Luba abandons the needle for pant through the novel, with Luba’s husband, Peter, a time and begins boozing heavily, but then shoots determined to shield her in every way from knowl- up again late in her pregnancy; indeed a botched edge of (and the consequences of) his business injection precipitates her labor, and later we are told affairs. Women are at once idealized and held in con- that Luba’s child has died of heart failure, presum- tempt by the men who dominate the novel’s sociopo- ably because of her drug abuse (139). Thus the fruits litical world. At one point, for instance, the gangster of Peter’s business poison even his house, his wife, Javier curtly dismisses the idea of a woman having and his child, a symbolic demolition of the wall he input into the affairs of business, “as if her say could has tried to build between “business” and home. ever matter,” to which his partner replies, “Right. If The subversive effects of “business” on home we ever let a woman have any say in business, we’re and family go even further: According to an old all through” (140–41). Such sentiments are the foun- business transaction (rather like the conditions dation of Poison River’s androcentric world. imposed in many fairy tales), Peter must yield up his Peter maintains that political and commercial firstborn son to a black market trade in children run affairs are no concern of Luba’s. For example, in ref- by gangsters at the Jardin de Paz, that is, Garden of erence to “the abortion and birth control contro- Peace, a burlesque club. (The babies are supplied by versy,” of which Luba has suddenly learned by a doctor and nurse who use their black market gains watching television, Peter remarks that “such mat- to finance the expansion of their hospital.) Even ters should never even be discussed in front of before his death, Luba’s newborn son is whisked someone as young as you, much less in the house, away, so that Luba is never allowed to see him but Luba.” Indeed Peter rejects the very idea of having simply told that he has died. Peter, caught in this TV in his home, though Luba refuses to part with it tangle because he once bought a child from the (91). His emphasis on the house as a place of refuge black market for his then-mistress, the transsex- is symptomatic: for Peter, home is an idealized ual Isobel, is compromised by “the business” even sphere, to be kept apart from the complications and before meeting Luba (and further compromised by ever-looming violence of the business. The house, the belly dancers at the Jardin, who appeal to his with Luba in it, should be entirely insulated from the sexual fetish and keep him firmly in the pocket of the outside world. Yet this cannot be, for the violent black marketers). Even Peter’s most private affairs repercussions of the business seep even into the and passions are caught up in a logic of calculation, domestic sphere, undermining the very home life exchange, and payoff: the cold language of the that Peter holds sacred. Specifically, Luba and her business deal. As the chief of the gangsters tells him, friends Lucy and Pepa, housewives all, begin com- “one day we will consummate this transaction” bating the isolation and boredom of their lives by (134). Though Peter fails to see it, the “business” shooting up with a drug (heroin, presumably) sup- completely undermines his idealized conception of plied by gangsters who run drugs for Peter’s boss, the home.

90 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP

Ultimately, Poison River argues that the “busi- These political tensions are deadly. “Leftists” are ness” can never be bracketed off from the emotional targeted for extermination by the self-styled patriots foundations of our lives; both professional and who inhabit the gangsters’ circle, most notably by domestic spheres are united in a chain of complicity Garza. A complex but wholly unpleasant character, and consequence. Just as the novel’s drug traffic is Garza sanctions murder, yet takes pains to distin- tangled in sexual politics, law enforcement, and the guish himself from the “criminal element” of Com- political struggle between revolutionary and coun- munists and Communist sympathizers (89). To him, terrevolutionary factions, so this confluence of forces political loyalty and commerce are of a piece. Pursuing poisons even the private lives of Hernandez’s charac- and destroying the leftist “oppressors of freedom,” ters. This is revealed in a shockingly offhand way late Garza maintains, is not a matter of “personal feel- in the novel, when a scrap of dialogue implies that ings,” even when his own unacknowledged feelings the terrorist attack that left Luba’s cousin Ofelia with (greed, jealousy, bitterness) may be prompting his a damaged spine, and left Ofelia’s friends Gina and actions. Rather, “[i]t is politics. It is business” (86). Ruben dead, was anonymously engineered by the A pillar of the community, Garza is used to being rightist gangster Garza and the club owner Salas addressed in terms that reaffirm his social superiority. the elder—both linked to Luba’s husband, Peter, “Yes, Señor Garza” is repeated, mantra-like, through- through the “business” (120). This same attack out much of the novel, almost always spoken by forces Ofelia; her mother, Hilda; and Luba (then a unseen lackeys whose very anonymity reinforces small child) to flee the town of Isleta, and Ofelia to Garza’s sense of power. In Garza the equation of take refuge in a distant part of the country. Thus it economic interest and counterrevolutionary politics also sets in motion the chain of events that will lead is most obvious; for him, doing “business” means Luba to Peter and her life with him. Everything is thwarting the Communist threat, and withdrawing connected in Poison River, though not one single from the business (as, for instance, the ironically character realizes this: to movers and shakers like named “Señor Paz” tries to do) means allying one- Garza, Salas, and Peter, the identities of such victims self with subversives. Economic bustle and moral as Gina, Ruben, and Ofelia are beneath notice. righteousness are inseparable in Garza’s world; it just Poison River, then, differs from prior Heartbreak so happens that much of his economic strength Soup stories in that it engages more directly with stems from criminal activity. Thus the gangster world the sociopolitical realities and myths of modern-day of Garza, Salas, Peter Rio, and company becomes a Latin America. It seems more embedded in the trau- nexus for political counterinsurgency. In this world mas of history than the tales that take place in the suspicion of leftist ties is the deepest shame and Palomar’s frankly synthetic locale. Whereas the early greatest threat. Heartbreak Soup tales refer only obliquely to the Here Hernandez taps into the history of Latin political struggles going on in the outside world, America in the Cold War era, for behind the novel’s Poison River extends the aggressive cultural critique equation of organized crime, big business, and coun- of Human Diastrophism, placing Luba’s life firmly terrevolution lies a host of U.S.-sponsored debacles within the context of the Cold War and examining in Latin American history, the muddy legacy of the the profound repercussions of that war within Latin Monroe and Truman doctrines. U.S.-engineered American culture. The terrors of revolutionary and incursions, interventions, and coups (Cold War skir- counterrevolutionary violence lie like a shadow across mishes, from a USAcentric viewpoint) have become the novel and at times take center stage. River’s part of the warp and woof of Latin American history: landscape is fraught with echoes of military and Guatemala, Cuba, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua. In this ideological conflicts, which, though they rise to milieu the influence of both the United States and the surface only occasionally, inform the entire the Soviet Union looms large, as shown early on narrative. when Ofelia, Gina, and Ruben attend a Communist

91 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP meeting with little Luba in tow (32). Here “Eisen- find Luba were initially prompted by his love for hower” is burned in effigy, and festive partygoers Maria, so Blas’s offer to spend the rest of his life paint Luba’s face with a hammer and sickle. As they “searching” for Armando Jose stems from his desire return from the meeting, Ofelia and company are to be with Peter and take care of him. stopped and questioned by an anti-Communist These searches are but one aspect of the sundered group led by Gomez, a local man whom Ruben has family relations that shape the novel. When Blas asks known, it seems, all his life (32–33). Thus their com- Luba what she and Peter have in common, she quips, munity is fearfully split by Cold War politics. “Both our parents left us when we were little. We both like dancing. More?” (65). Beneath Luba’s flip- pancy lies a shred of truth, though the facts are more “BOTH OUR PARENTS LEFT US WHEN complicated than this: As Luba soon discovers, WE WERE LITTLE” Peter’s father has not walked out of his life entirely; in fact Fermin Rio soon returns and takes up residence To grasp such political issues and personalize them in his son’s house, where he keeps an eye on Luba requires an overarching sense of history. It is and secretly intercedes in Peter’s affairs. Fermin did Hernandez’s deft manipulation of history, of time, not actually abandon his son when he was “little” that generates the bitter ironies of Poison River, as but twice has fallen out with Peter over women: first the novel’s plot comprises a decades-long pattern of Maria, later the transsexual Isobel, both of whom the reflections, echoes, and repetitions. In fact this pat- jealous Fermin beat savagely. Peter, to whom beating tern can only be grasped by reading across the gen- women is anathema, provokes his father by calling erations, as we witness the repeated corruption or up the memory of his own mother, whom Fermin poisoning of familial and sexual relationships (the apparently abused in like fashion: “Only a punch or very relationships that give the whole of Heartbreak two . . . it’s nothing, eh, Papa? Like it was nothing to Soup its raison d’être). In particular, the severing of Mama, either, was it Papa? Nothing” (126). (Peter’s parent-child bonds takes on central importance, as mother’s fate remains unknown.) Maria’s abandonment of Luba sparks not one but This sore point between Peter and Fermin under- ultimately two searches for familial closure. First lies Peter’s tender yet paternalistic regard for women comes the quest for Luba herself, prompted by in general, and Luba in particular. His aversion to Peter’s relationship with Maria and pursued by the hurting women is so strong that at one point he enigmatic Señor Pito for some twelve years; second, viciously beats a club patron for throwing a glass at Blas and Peter’s “search” for Peter and Luba’s lost one of his dancers, all the while lecturing him thus: son, Armando Jose. This second search will, as Blas “You never ever ever strike a woman!” (74). This says, take “the rest of our lives,” as indeed Pito’s attitude also prompts Peter to protect Luba by quest for Luba lasts the rest of his (151). threatening others with violence: “[I]f there is one Before book’s end, the reader knows that tiny cut on my wife’s body that wasn’t there before; Armando Jose has died of heart failure (an event one bruise, just one tear from her eyes . . .” (88). confirmed twice over) and that Blas knows this too. Behind this ferocity are Peter’s memories of his Thus Blas and Peter’s quest becomes an ironic, dead- mother, memories that kindle a rage inspired by his end counterpart to Pito’s successful quest for Luba. father but now redirected. In each case, the whereabouts of an abandoned The novel’s father/son conflict deepens its cri- child are at issue, and in each case love motivates the tique of masculine power. Both Fermin and Peter quest. In Blas’s case, it is his love for Peter that represent aspects of patriarchy: Fermin, violent and prompts him to carry on this charade, for, as the controlling, is sharply unsentimental about women; gangster Moises puts it, “Blas did what he did just to Peter, affectionate and also controlling, is senti- win Peter for himself” (154). As Peter’s efforts to mental and protective. Fermin views male/female

92 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP relations fatalistically, as he discloses to Peter late in seems to regard it as a nuisance, yet refuses to let the novel: “The constant battle between the left and anyone else handle it. Urged on by friends, Luba right is the least of the world’s worries, eh, son? It’s tries to have it opened but cannot. When the book is the war of the sexes that’s always been life’s true finally opened (by police officers during their ques- headache. Heh heh—but what’s life without a wor- tioning of Luba), it discloses photos of Maria and thy struggle, eh? Without a strong woman to fight other memorabilia—such as the bloodied earrings with from time to time. Your mother—she wasn’t worn by Gina on the night of her murder, placed much of a fighter . . . You were luckier with your lit- there by Ofelia. “Junk,” Luba declares, “All of it.” tle fire brand Lubita” (149). Peter, now disabled by a Yet she playfully attempts to mimic the glamour stroke, can only sit by passively, muttering his lovers’ poses assumed by Maria in the photographs (95). names, as his father holds forth. Fermin goes on to Dreaming of her mother, she sees her husband suck- reveal that it was he who killed the transsexual ling at Maria’s breast in an eerie, Frida Kahlo-like Isobel, whom he describes as “the biggest mistake image: Peter’s head is adult, but his body small and of the lot” and “neither a man nor a woman.” childlike. Then she wakes to find Peter poring Indeed, Isobel’s transgender identity threatens the through the keepsakes from the book. Luba, dis- male/female binary that props up Poison River’s traught, only wants to get rid of these reminders of entire world, and Peter’s love for Isobel likewise the unknown past, and Peter, not disclosing his prior threatens his position therein. Fermin recognizes knowledge of Maria, accedes to Luba’s wishes. He this: Isobel was an anomaly, a “mistake” who could consigns the box and its contents to the fire, to be only be “a source of pain and confusion to normal burned out of Luba’s life, and his, forever (96). (A men like us . . . “ (149). She had to be removed. flashback later reveals that Peter has opened the box Peter feels differently: his love for Isobel represents before, unbeknownst to Luba, just prior to their a rebellion against his father’s values and, more wedding.) broadly, an unconscious resistance to the prevailing For Luba the question of her mother’s identity misogyny of the novel’s world. This resistance cli- and whereabouts is only painful: “No more talk maxes in violence, as Peter, slurring out Isobel’s about my mother—! She left me—! She’s dead! name, finally rises from his stupor and rams the end Dead—!” (137). Yet Maria does not disappear so of his cane down his father’s throat, killing him (a easily. Indeed, after Luba’s so-called miscarriage a gruesome but poetically apt climax). vision of Maria appears, dreamlike, over the hospital In a sense, then, Luba’s flippant remark is correct: bed that Luba and Peter share. She tells Luba that Peter has been abandoned by his father, insofar as her supposedly stillborn son, Armando Jose, is alive he has been both brutalized and alienated by (information that is later to be contradicted). The Fermin’s violence. And of course she herself has image of Maria appears again, briefly, heirloom box been abandoned by her mother, Maria, a loss she in hand, as Luba is carried away from Peter’s home can never really come to grips with but that (and the life of a gangster’s wife) by Fermin and the nonetheless shapes her character. The signs appear mysterious Gorgo. The memory of her mother’s early on: as a little child Luba begins to think of her absence lies deep within Luba, prompting her to dis- cousin Ofelia as “Mama Ofelia,” for Ofelia takes the trust all such relationships. As she says to her infant place of Luba’s absent mother (29). Just so, Luba daughter, Maricela, prophetically, at novel’s end, herself later assumes the place of Ofelia, and even “Ahh . . . You’ll leave me one day, Maricela . . . just her name, for her blind, bedridden aunt Hilda (43). like all the others . . . “ (187). For Luba loss is the Luba’s loss is ironically reinforced by her posses- way of life, and her past simply that: long gone, an sion of Maria’s only heirloom, a hollow book filled inaccessible mystery. with keepsakes, which she cannot open. Given this Poison River, then, is a tale of relationships dis- book on the day of her wedding to Peter, Luba later rupted or denied, as well as relationships sought or

93 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP resumed (for example, when the adult Luba redis- control her. (Though already thrown out of the covers her cousin Ofelia after years apart). house by Peter, Fermin tries to bring Luba back to Hernandez’s vast temporal canvas allows for the the nest.) Alienated from her father-in-law, Luba exploration of such relationships over a spread of becomes more and more unfeeling toward her dis- many years, an exploration that generates telling abled husband, of whom she says, “I’m not sure he’s echoes and ironies. Both Luba and Peter are got any brains left working in his head” (140). wounded by life, and hardened; both are haunted Deprived of both a lover (police captain Joselito by lost or sundered relationships with their own par- Ortiz, strangled by Fermin) and a son (Armando ents; and, finally, both are caught in a world in which Joselito, dead), she begins to shut herself up in “business” (the business of ownership, control, and drunkenness, and waltzes carelessly through the use) short-circuits or corrupts intimate relationships. affairs of Peter’s gangster associates with an increas- Peter, for his part, treats Luba kindly, yet does ingly sardonic air: “You boys get back to whatever business ruthlessly. His life is built around an exag- bullshit you were up to . . .” (141). gerated split between cozy domesticity and the Once cloistered by the paternalism of Peter harsh realities of business, which, by his own admis- (whom she calls “Daddy”), Luba survives after his sion, is “an eventual dead end.” In a sense, he is stroke by cultivating her own ignorance and block- quite knowing about what the business entails: ing out the “business” of the world. Yet she learns to “Either you die or worse; somebody you love” (75). get her way during her subsequent travels by invok- Still he insists, “The world just takes getting used to, ing her husband’s power and status (155). Unaware baby . . . then you can use it” (61). Indeed his ambi- of the causes or extent of what’s happening around tion is to use it: “Peter Rio is a name to remember, her, Luba remains blinkered in her vision to the very Luba. [. . .] A name with the potential to dry the end, focusing exclusively on herself, her family, and Pacific, to flood the Sahara . . . “ (53). His talent, he a series of short-term sexual partners. Thus she pre- says, is “management” (60), yet his coolly entrepre- serves the naiveté of her adolescent years with Peter. neurial exterior is belied by the tenderness of his While her cousin Ofelia knows what is happening emotions: toward Maria, toward Isobel, toward around her—the country is in a state of civil war by Luba. The business “transaction” that finally breaks novel’s end, though Ofelia shields Luba from know- Peter—the surrender of his son to the black marke- ing it—Luba’s lens on the world remains micro- teers, which precipitates his stroke—stems from the scopic. For example, she doesn’t realize that the uneasy overlap of his “business” and his private life, stench hovering over a certain spot comes from a notwithstanding his vain attempts to keep the two pile of rotting corpses just out of her sight (164). entirely separate. The loss of Armando Jose, the cli- Thus Peter’s protectiveness leads to Luba’s lifelong max of a series of events stemming from his tense habit of willful myopia; like Peter, she fails to recog- relationship with his father and his love for Isobel, nize that her affairs and the affairs of the world are brings his reign as a gangster boss to a messy, intertwined (an intertwining already argued by protracted end. In a sense, then, Poison River is Hernandez in Human Diastrophism, and powerfully Peter Rio’s tragedy: though often callous and conde- reinforced here). scending, and bristling with compensatory machismo, Despite Luba’s willed ignorance, political violence Peter emerges as a fully humanized character, more brackets Poison River. The fate of Ofelia’s Communist vulnerable than his status would seem to suggest. colleagues (at the beginning of the novel) and the Luba, for her part, becomes increasingly coarse, looming war between “military” and “rebels” (at unfeeling, and alcohol-sotted after Peter’s stroke, as the end) suggest a microcosm of Latin American his- the emotional pillars of her life come tumbling tory during the Cold War. Luba remains oblivious to down. While she persists in drinking and nightclub- this history, living it but looking through it without bing, “Papa Fermin,” as she calls him, seeks to ever understanding it—without understanding, that

94 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP is, the political forces that have disrupted and com- Maria’s involvement with the gangster Garza and plicated her life. Meanwhile, political ideology, crim- with the father-and-son musical team of Fermin and inal activity, and sexual desires overlap and reinforce Peter Rio (the Rios become part of Garza’s gangster each other. Repeatedly, characters like Garza and circle). Maria, having abandoned Luba and Luba’s Salas argue political positions that mask their per- father, Eduardo, has become Garza’s mistress but sonal investments and motives; repeatedly, politics soon enters into an affair with Fermin; while Peter, mixes haphazardly with personal vendettas, sexual his affair with Garza’s wife, Ramona, cooling, falls in amours, and familial conflict. Political principle gives love with Maria and begins making love to her too. a respectable face to personal animus and informs Caught between these three men—Garza, Fermin, the various personal and “business” developments and Peter—Maria inspires each to a different extreme. in Peter’s circle. Political conflict shapes Luba’s life The jealous Garza, who tends to express himself from infancy (the Salas-sponsored attack on Gina, with guns, shoots his pistols off wildly and quarrels Ruben, and Ofelia) to adulthood (the war-prompted bitterly with his wife. The equally jealous Fermin, departure of her lover Antonino, father of Maricela). suspecting that there is yet another for Maria She, however, remains clueless. The ironies of Luba’s besides Garza, vents his unfocused rage by beating life, and specifically how that life has been shaped by her. Fermin’s son Peter, swept away by love for the abstract yet very real forces of ideology, are Maria, hires Senor Pito and his son Gorgo to track made plain by Hernandez’s manipulation of history down Luba (a move that will lead to his own meet- on a vast scale; yet Luba never confronts them. ing with, and marriage to, Luba some twelve years hence). Maria herself, a vain, promiscuous moll who magnetizes men with her beauty, represents a vision TIME (AND AGAIN) of voluptuous feminine charm so ripe as to border on self-parody; indeed, the stereotypic extremity of Again, it is Hernandez’s fluid sense of time that gives her character brings out, and holds up for ridicule, Poison River such political and emotional heft. His the masculine possessiveness of the three lovers. graphic negotiation of Luba’s history (sometimes The end result is a tangled weave of dysfunc- back and forth across years in a single page) gives tional relationships, a web that allows Hernandez a the novel a scope beyond the narrowly personal, great deal of play with time as he leaps from one because sifting through her life exposes meaningful relationship to another. The pace is unrelenting: as social patterns: political and sexual ideology, com- the flashback unfolds, these affairs overlap and merce, crime, corruption. Yet River remains intimate; develop with startling speed, and the tension the novel observes these patterns as they shape indi- between single image and image-in-series is severe. vidual lives. Hernandez understands that time, in On one page, for example, we see Maria’s relation- comics, is a function of space, the visual space of the ships with all three men, summarily evoked (fig. 34). page, and this enables him to personalize ideological Fermin admires her body and speaks nonchalantly and social issues, through the twinned images of about her affair with “that crook” Garza; Peter absentee mother (Maria) and lost daughter (Luba). begins his affair with her, and even confesses love to Both women are comic epitomes of feminine pul- her; and Garza dreams of Maria bearing him children chritude within a profoundly male and (not coinci- to carry on his “war against the oppressors of free- dentally for Hernandez) profoundly corrupt culture. dom,” that is, leftists (124). In fact all three relation- Their relationships to men, and to each other, are ships are quickly conveyed in the middle tier of this matters of time. single page, as three successive panels show us, first, This radical sense of time reaches its height dur- Peter’s tense, sweaty reaction to Fermin and Maria’s ing an extended flashback sequence, two-thirds into bantering; second, Maria and Peter in bed, Peter the novel, which quickly replays the history of aflush with love and intemperately confessing it (in

96 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP contrast to his father’s blasé attitude); and third, A hand reaching for Maria in panel two leads easily Maria and Garza, as the latter dreams of fathering to Fermin’s dialogue in panel three, though the two children by her. The page is a marvel of compression; panels depict two different incidents (as signaled the narrative barrels ahead without pause. Maria’s by Maria’s change of clothes). A similar confusion ambiguous whisper, “Children . . ?”, leads us into occurs between panels four and five: again, a hand the next tier of panels, and a new scene, as she runs reaches for Maria, leading to Garza’s placatory from Peter, distraught over (presumably) her aban- speech in the next panel, but again Maria’s appear- donment of Luba. In a crucial twist, Peter offers to ance changes between the two images. By thus blur- locate Maria’s daughter. ring our sense of time, Hernandez suggests a pattern What is notable here is not Maria’s character per se, of repeated behavior. The dialogue and actions sug- but the way her seeming absence of character, gest a seamless sequence, yet the shifting costumes her stereotypic perfection and consequent empti- and rotating male characters point out the passage ness, make her the perfect magnet for the desires of of a great deal of time. the three men, each of whom longs for affirmation This page depicts separate incidents from Maria’s from Maria but of course cannot trust her. That life, yet verbal echoes suggest that these incidents all Maria embodies a stereotype of feminine affectation follow logically from a pattern of dysfunctional rela- and charm is precisely the point: though she remains tions with men. In panel two, the ticket seller tells inconstant, unpredictable, and thoroughly amoral, Maria that her bus will take her to Chilo to catch a her continual costume changes and affected good train; in panel four Maria attempts to purchase a looks make her a perfect vehicle for the men’s ticket to Chilo for the same purpose. In each case desires. (The front cover of Love & Rockets No. 45 someone off-panel calls her name and reaches out [July 1994] finds Maria competing in the “Miss for her. In panels three and five, lovers try to keep Luminosa” contest for 1948, in which every contest- Maria by promising marriage, and in both she ant has an identical beauty mark on her right cheek!) responds, “All right. . . .” On the bottom tier of the Maria’s story becomes the men’s story, a story in page (panels seven through nine), Fermin, Garza which all of the relationships follow a predictably and Peter share the same fate, loss of Maria, and all dysfunctional pattern. The men change, and her three call out for her in vain. Each man appears dif- costume changes, but the overall pattern stays ferent, yet each calls for her in a questioning tone, the same. revealing his surprise and aloneness as she finally Nowhere is this more evident than in a one-page, escapes from him. These last three panels suggest nine-panel sequence (new to the collected edition) a gradual loss of hope, as Maria’s lovers seem to in which Maria attempts to end her relationships lose the power to speak: we go from Fermin’s with the three men by running away (128). As she “Maria . . ?” to Garza’s “Mar . . ?” to, finally, Peter’s tries, repeatedly, to leave by bus, she is stopped by hopeless, inarticulate “M . . ?” The interplay of word men who want to marry her, take care of her, and and image links these separate instances within a make her stay (fig. 35). The same scene repeats consistent behavioral pattern and provides a sense itself, with variations, several times. Maria wears of direction to what would otherwise be a radically different clothes in each of the first six panels, and disjointed sequence. Though time leaps forward in the odd-numbered panels (one, three, and five) with dizzying speed, via uncued scenic transitions, talks to Peter, Fermin, and Garza respectively. Thus repetitions in both dialogue and composition ease we know that this sequence covers a significant span the image/series tension and allow us to see these of time, and a number of discrete incidents, in her drastic shifts as part of a predictable, indeed inevitable, life. Yet the movement between these panels is process. deceptively easy: the flow of dialogue and action Such whiplash transitions occur throughout implies continuous movement within a single scene. Poison River but most tellingly when Luba finally

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Figure 36. Poison River 143 (excerpt). © 2004 Gilbert Hernandez. Used with permission. escapes from the gangland life. Wandering drunk- on, Luba’s life will be spent on the run—until she dis- enly from a gangster meeting in Peter’s home covers Palomar at novel’s end. (Peter’s stroke has rendered him helpless), Luba drifts through the hedges outside, where she encounters a young man from the meeting and begins to “JUNK” AND INFORMATION: POISON RIVER have sex with him. She is “rescued,” however, by AS METACOMIC her homicidal father-in-law, Fermin, who strangles the man (fig. 36). Luba glimpses the murder, As Poison River leapfrogs through time, it insists on prompting a flashback to a key incident earlier in the the overlap between personal and political history, novel: the terrorist attack in which her cousin Ofelia examining, like Human Diastrophism, the inter- was raped, beaten, and left for dead by counterrev- change of private and public life. It also extends the olutionary thugs (39–41). This traumatic memory implied self-criticism of Diastrophism by commenting harks back to Luba’s early childhood, and Luba her- acidly on mass culture and its impact (a concern seen self, as a small girl, is shown witnessing the rape. The early on in Heartbreak Soup with the introduction of adult Luba then collapses, muttering, as if overcome Luba’s movie theater).5 Films figure prominently in by the memory, and on the following page images Poison River, as cousin Ofelia brings young Luba to from her past interrupt the flow of action: first the movies and, later, as Fermin gets Luba a TV set, Maria, holding the hollow book that has become on which she watches movies against Peter’s wishes. Luba’s inheritance; then a lucid Peter, who says, “I For Peter, movies are the stuff of cheap fantasy and love you, Lubita” (144). These disjointed break- beneath contempt: “the lowest and silliest form of downs not only reflect Luba’s drink-induced stupor telling stories” (91). For Luba, in contrast, movies but also signal the dark passage from this part of her are an education of sorts, offering heretofore- life to her subsequent life without Peter. From here unseen visions of such stuff as, ironically, “Gangsters

99 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP and murder and men cheating on their wives” (all just “look at the pictures” (28). Luba heartily enjoys topics appropriate for Peter and his circle). Fermin’s the Pedro comic books; indeed, she seems to love gift of the TV puts Luba back in touch with the them, whereas she shrinks in fright from the “pro- movies she experienced as a child, movies she gressive art” (Frida Kahlo) to which Ofelia tries to apparently no longer consciously remembers. introduce her. In fact Ofelia takes some heat from Luba refuses to part with the television despite her leftist friends for feeding Luba’s mind this way. Peter’s claim that it will “rot your brain” (91). As in the real-life anti-comics movements of the Besides movies, the TV offers news, which offends 1950s, so in Hernandez’s tale: criticism of Pedro Peter even more deeply—news that brings to Luba comics stems from the left as well as the right. such controversial issues as birth control and abor- Ofelia’s Communist friend Gina, for instance, roundly tion. Such stuff, he argues, consists merely of criticizes Ofelia for teaching Luba to read with this “[s]implistic and biased views on politics and any “junk,” which she condemns as racist: “Pedro’s the sensational aspects of human suffering that might good little black boy who’s happy to be poor and titillate” (91). Of course, such news also directly uneducated; and they draw him like a monkey!” challenges Peter’s cloistral attitude toward home and (30). Gina’s remarks echo many real-life studies of hearth (note that Fermin, less idealistic and more comic books and children’s literature, in which the cynical than his son, is the agent of this challenge). ideological implications of familiar icons—Babar, Luba’s confrontation with the news of the world, fil- Curious George, Barks/Disney’s Uncle Scrooge, and tered through TV, recalls the television-mediated cli- so forth—have been laid bare (see, for example, max of Human Diastrophism: human suffering Dorfman and Mattelart’s seminal How to Read indeed. Though Fermin’s efforts to bring her “the Donald Duck, and Dorfman’s subsequent The information of the world” run counter to Peter’s Empire’s New Clothes). Indeed, the character Ruben chivalric paternalism, Luba remains mesmerized by notes that there have been “attempts by educators the TV and won’t let it go. and the like to have Pedro comics banned,” a But the most prevalent form of pop culture on reminder of the realities of Hernandez’s chosen field: display in Poison River, and the one for which Peter comics have been attacked by not only conservative reserves his deepest contempt, is “funnybooks”— but also progressive political figures (notably, that is, ironically enough, comics (fig. 37). In the per- Wertham, whose condemnation of the comic book son of the blackface comic-book character “Pedro industry made him an inadvertent bedfellow of Pacotilla” (glimpsed back in Diastrophism), comics rightist censors). represent an affront to Peter’s civilized self-image. Ruben also remarks that, thanks to the merchan- This insult is so degrading that Peter takes pains to dising of Pedro, “the little shit will probably outlive differentiate between his own name (the English us all” (30). Unnoticed by the adults, the child Luba Peter, or, as Luba learns it, Pee-ter) and “Pedro.” replies, “Indubitably!”, a comment on the durability “Everybody who’s been degraded with the name of Hernandez’s medium as well as subtle testimony Pedro,” he argues, “ought to sue or something . . .” to the vocabulary Luba has picked up through her (53). Pedro, of course, is everywhere: a thick-lipped, comics reading. Of course, her remark also turns out black-skinned, Sambo-like icon beaming from not to be true in a literal sense, for both Gina and Ruben only comics but also advertisements, billboards, and are soon slain by counterrevolutionary thugs; yet lighted signs. In one telling moment, Peter criticizes Pedro lives on in sign and poster, neon and print. his mistress Isobel for letting her daughter play with Indeed Pedro’s smiling countenance recurs again a Pedro doll (135). and again, ever unresponsive to circumstance, as Ironically, little Luba receives much of her early many of Poison River’s characters die off. Most education from Pedro comics. Ofelia and Luba read notably, Pedro appears, without explanation, imme- Pedro together, Ofelia prompting Luba to read, not diately after the gangland massacre that kills off

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Garza, young Salas, and numerous henchmen (fig. young Luba’s passport to literacy, he can also be a 37). As they die in a welter of blood, bullets flying, mocking symbol of Peter Rio’s economic ambitions. Pedro Pacotilla outlives them all, his face a perfect Indeed, by the time Garza and Salas go down in a icon of comic imperturbability (108). hail of bullets, Pedro has become their silent In fact Pedro is something of an icon for the spokesman. He is also an ironic emblem of hope, “business” in which Peter and his circle are so obses- appearing one last time as Blas and the disabled sively engaged. The image of Pedro shows up over Peter head north, toward the United States, suppos- and over in the city, in lights and on billboards, a sig- edly to search for the lost child, Armando Jose. The nifier of blissed-out consumerism. First, when Luba’s smiling image of Pedro puts the lie to Blas’s promise father, Eduardo, carries her through the city streets, to look for the dead child. As the two ride off into begging for their survival, Pedro’s smiling cartoon the sunset (so to speak) in a taxicab, Blas sees a face mocks Eduardo’s poverty and desperation (18). bright future ahead: “Aw, it’s going to be good, Later, Pedro turns up again, on billboards, when Peter; I promise. It’ll be so good . . .” (151). The Peter and his fellow musicians are talking amongst cartoon image of Pedro, ever grinning, looks down themselves about business (52); later still, the image from several billboards sans comment—but the image of Pedro serves as a backdrop for Peter’s first face- speaks volumes. to-face meeting with young Salas, as they discuss a Thus Poison River tips its hand, drawing even drug deal (62). Representative for a soft drink comic art itself, as a fund of stereotypic, politically (“Robo Cola”), Pedro appears in the background charged imagery, into Hernandez’s larger political and again and again, an ever-present reminder of com- cultural argument. Like Human Diastrophism before merce, indeed of “business” at its most aggressive. it—and indeed like Spiegelman’s Maus and many Like many popular cartoon characters, Pedro is other alternative comics—River becomes a metatext, polysemic: he can mean many things. If he can be an interrogation of its own medium; it too insists on

101 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP the political implications of comics. Everything in (Gilbert Hernandez to the author, 22 Mar. 2000). River is up for grabs. Just as, in previous tales, Luba’s Each issue of the magazine brought an allotment of movie theater and Howard Miller’s self-interested pages, but unlike Human Diastrophism, River dis- photojournalism serve to comment on mass culture pensed with even token attempts to acclimate those and mass media, so too Pedro, in Poison River, opens readers who entered in medias res.6 As the graphic a self-reflexive dimension, a space for auto-critique. novel grew in breadth and complexity, the serial per The novel’s final pages are self-reflexive in a differ- se faltered. Poison River became the supreme test of ent sense, for they strive to contain River’s alarming readers’ loyalty, during a period when both Gilbert story by bringing us full circle, back to the sheltered and Jaime Hernandez (then working on his own village of Palomar, but now for the “first” time. Luba, eight-part novel, Wig Wam Bam) pushed their audi- Ofelia, and Maricela stand outside Palomar, looking ence’s endurance. down at it, while the young Palomarans Jesus, Satch, The experience, apparently, proved exhausting to and Toco look on. In short, we are at the very thresh- both Gilbert and his readers. Looking at this period old of the first Heartbreak Soup story, “Sopa de Gran in hindsight, Hernandez would complain that he had Pena.” For the seasoned reader, this recursion is reas- “almost cut [his] head off doing Poison River,” yet suring, yet also a bit odd: after Poison River, how can had received little response beyond, “Oh, that was Palomar ever be the same? To read these last pages is hard to read” (Gaiman, Interview 95). As a serial, to experience both the shock of recognition and a River alienated even some of Love & Rockets’ core bewildering sense of displacement. This is Palomar, audience: the tide of enthusiasm that had greeted yes, but how did all of that backstory get in here? the magazine years before retreated, and, according to Hernandez, “our star began to dim” (Knowles 54). In other words, fan mail stopped coming and THE DEATH AND THE REBIRTH OF LOVE & sales dropped (Hernandez to the author). Thus Love ROCKETS & Rockets risked losing its status as the standard- bearer for alternative comics. Later the artist would Indeed Poison River may have crammed in too much. admit that he himself found River a trying experi- The story was a daunting experiment, a graphic novel ence: “I would sit at the board and bust my head in the truest sense, serialized over some four years in open, trying to finish this stuff, and then I’d trash the twelve installments. What’s more, it unfolded at the page and start over” (Knowles 54). Post-Poison same time as another graphic novel by Hernandez, a River issues would therefore be promoted with a teeming chronicle of life in multicultural Los Angeles promise to return to shorter, less involved stories. titled simply “Love & Rockets” (later collected as The collected graphic novel version of Poison River, Love & Rockets X). “Love and Rockets,” conceived as released well after the story’s serialization (1994), a “break” from the density of Poison River (Knowles incorporated some forty-six pages of new material, 54), nonetheless grew into a psychologically complex including not only suggestive title pages (as noted and bitingly topical story in its own right (though above), but also many pages of interpolated narra- beyond our compass here). In short, Hernandez was tive designed to deepen, explicate, and smooth over then producing two different stories, each at a heady its tortuous story. (Changes in the collected River pace. Under this pressure, Poison River, which began range from minor graphic refinements, such as light- as a series of carefully structured chapters, soon ening the color of Maria’s eyes, to major structural devolved into smaller, less shaped, and less cohesive revisions, such as expanding the crucial flashback of installments, making no concessions to Love & chapters 11–13 by two pages.) Rockets’ serial readership. The artist would later After Poison River, and the structurally simpler but recall feeling thoroughly absorbed by River and thematically challenging Love & Rockets X, Hernandez “fit[ting] the chapters in L&R as space allowed” returns to Palomar in a new mood, downplaying

102 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP politics so as to iron out and extend the Heartbreak aspects in the arc of Love & Rockets 41–50 frustrate Soup storyline. This period, still complicated but now such a reading. Specifically, Hernandez introduced more episodic, seems rather hermetic and self- elements that suggest a narrowing of interest to his involved; the stories bespeak consolidation if not own private cosmos: he began to elaborate further, retreat. Hernandez, by his own admission, “backed and inject new material into, the history of Luba’s off from any profundity,” and a door once opened family and even absorbed prior non-Heartbreak now began to close (Huestis 68). The artist would Soup material into Luba’s life. Ironically, this inward- later reflect: “I had two political stories in me, HD spiraling approach came even as he considered shift- [that is, Human Diastrophism] and PR [Poison ing toward “completely different types of stories” River], and that’s it. Unless I came upon something (Huestis 68). In seeking to avoid the vast, by-now political that I would’ve liked expressed, I preferred cumbersome workings of his own fictional history, to keep away, as not to repeat myself or half-ass any Hernandez only tied it into a tighter, more intractable truth about other people’s misery” (Hernandez to the knot—in part because he was driven by the impend- author). This candid self-assessment shows a brusque ing end of Love & Rockets and a need to bring out honesty, as well as a desire not to sit still creatively. It numerous story elements that he had “backed up” also shows an awareness of diminished scope. for years (Huestis 68). Depending on one’s view- After the trial by River, there was still the popula- point, leaving Palomar was either about cutting the tion of Palomar to deal with. The final stories in Gordian knot of continuity or carrying Hernandez’s Heartbreak Soup (issues 41–50 of Love & Rockets) interest in Luba to its logical extreme. From the artist’s aim for complete closure, showing the aging of perspective, it “was simply about not ‘ruining’ it,” a Palomar under Luba’s mayorship. Many longtime remark that suggests Palomar could not easily accom- characters, including Luba’s daughters Maricela, modate the increasing complexity of Luba and her Guadalupe, and Doralis, emigrate to Southern family tree (Hernandez to the author). California. Other children come, and other relation- With hindsight, the result of all this seems to have ships, including Luba’s reuniting with the now-dis- been further complication, but without the vaulting figured Khamo (terribly burned in his attempt to thematic complexity seen in Poison River. Luba’s save Tonantzin at the end of Diastrophism). family becomes increasingly connected to her hith- Humanly rich though they are, these last tales, such erto unrevealed half-sisters, Petra and Fritzi, two as “Farewell, My Palomar” and “Luba Conquers the characters imported from Hernandez’s previously World,” move toward a foreordained conclusion: unconnected erotic humor series, Birdland (1990–92), Luba’s decision to leave Palomar behind forever. a would-be lark published under Fantagraphics’ Plot-wise, this move is justified by the arrival of “Eros” imprint (undertaken as yet another escape would-be killers connected to Luba’s past, an intru- valve for the pressures of Poison River). As Luba’s sion presaged by the reappearance of her onetime daughters migrate to California, Petra and Fritzi, two protector Gorgo, from Poison River (now a very old exaggerated icons of femininity much like their man). With these reminders of Luba’s past suddenly mother, Maria, travel to Palomar to be reunited with intruding on her life, the sanctuary of Palomar no their half-sister. While the flight of Luba’s daughters longer seems inviolable, and, with the fiftieth and to California opened the possibility of pungent com- final issue of the original Love & Rockets, Luba mentary about Latino/a life in the United States, departs Hernandez’s fabled village for good. Hernandez focused equally on the unexpected busi- This farewell to Palomar might seem to have ness of grafting the carefree Birdland to Luba’s more been designed to open up Hernandez’s work once complex history. (At the time this effort seemed again to broader sociopolitical issues; after all, from quixotic, to say the least, but since then he has used here Luba’s story will shift to the Los Angeles first these characters to create some of the most fully depicted in Love & Rockets X. However, other realized erotic fiction in comics.)

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Gilbert’s sketchbook work from this period testi- older but still obsessed, secretly making statues of fies to his growing fascination with Maria, Luba, and Palomar’s citizenry and sinking them in the nearby their progeny (see L&R Sketchbook 2 [1992]). lake (a point hinted at issues before). Beneath the Maria’s own storied life, and sexual couplings, pro- waters of the lake lies a fabulous recreation of Her- vide the backstory for an increasingly baroque world nandez’s cast, standing on the bottom, hidden from based on this single family. The result is a series of sight (fig. 38). “One day this stream will be gone tales that continue to blend past and present, but and the statues will be exposed,” says Humberto. without Poison River’s sociopolitical sweep. Some of “Reaching ever upward toward God—the sun—like these stories—notably, “A Trick of the Unconscious” eternal flowers and I will be forgiven my sins . . .” and “The Gorgo Wheel”—also blend the naturalistic (517). The implications are bleak: from the possibility and the fantastic, as Hernandez unexpectedly rein- of a revolutionary art, questioned but still hinted at jects elements of genre fantasy into his world. This by Augustin’s mural at the end of Diastrophism, turn to fantasy climaxes not with a Palomar story but Humberto has moved to a underwater (under- with two curious experiments: “Satyricon” (Love & ground?) art, one he can do only as long as he remains Rockets No. 46, 1994), a Gilbert story about Jaime’s hidden. Hernandez now envisions an art enabled by early science-fiction characters; and “My Love its very obscurity. Like Hernandez, Humberto himself Book” (No. 49, 1995), a mocking interrogation of has created a composite portrait of Palomar—but the autobiographical comics genre (to which we has sent it to the bottom of the pool, a standing relic shall return in our next chapter). In these fascinating reminiscent of the famed Terra Cotta army of Qin one-off tales (both reprinted in Hernandez Satyricon, Shihuangdi or the mummified victims of Vesuvius. 1997) Gilbert’s self-referential gambits take on an It is hard not to see a despairing trend here, a fic- increasingly sardonic, self-mocking, and pessimistic air. tionalized response to the pressures and disappoint- With the final Heartbreak Soup tale, “Chelo’s ment caused by the tentative reception of Poison Burden” (Love & Rockets No. 50, 1996; Palomar River. In the wake of that immensely complicated 499–522), Hernandez attempts to bring the series and ambitious novel, Heartbreak Soup seems to full circle. In the process, he achieves several stun- swallow its own tail, leading to the dissolution of ning narrative coups. For one, he blithely unites his Love & Rockets itself at Gilbert’s suggestion, and own universe with elements of brother Jaime’s Locas the abandonment of his trademark series (Huestis world (through the appearance of one of Jaime’s 68). The sendoff in “Chelo’s Burden” is grand, full signature characters). He also rekindles a number of with remembrances and resonances for the seasoned issues previously established, yet long ignored, reader, but the dénouement nonetheless seems including Sheriff Chelo’s infertility and the impact of fated. photojournalist Howard Miller’s visit on the town. (In “Chelo’s Burden,” though, does succeed in a wonderfully ironic scene, Luba’s daughter Maricela imposing an overall shape on Heartbreak Soup, a and her son Jaime discover Miller’s book of Palomar logic that is not merely cumulative but symmetrical. photos in a California library.) Yet the most telling The rounding off of the series, including Humberto’s element of this final story, and the most troubling, is sudden, heavily freighted reappearance, allowed the reappearance of the artist Humberto, neglected Hernandez to leave Love & Rockets on a high note since Human Diastrophism, who has found a way and to move on. It cleared the way for an attempted around his promise never to make art again. It is renegotiation of his position within the comics field. here that Hernandez’s self-reflexive examination of This was no easy task: to turn one’s back on a success- his art comes to a head. ful brand like Love & Rockets is to take an enormous Ostracized for his failure to act in Diastrophism, professional risk, though one that, potentially, opens Humberto is a figure virtually erased from the subse- spaces for new, innovative work. Indeed, from 1996 quent continuity, until this final chapter finds him, onward Hernandez was extraordinarily disciplined

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and prolific, offering up a dizzying variety of projects of his early, pre-Palomar stories, such as “BEM” and (until the much-hyped return of L&R in 2001). “Music for Monsters” (1979–83). Yet Girl Crazy lacks Immediately after Love & Rockets, Hernandez the provocative ironies of its predecessors; despite the launched into a six-issue series of disconnected and artist’s irrepressible sense of play, the series comes off surreal stories, New Love (1996–97), which included as a frothy indulgence of comic book clichés. Like one explicitly Palomar-related serial, “Letters from Birdland, Hernandez’s droll foray into erotica, Girl Venus.” (Venus is Luba’s niece, and lives in Cali- Crazy has a whiz-bang, insouciant quality. fornia.) Much of New Love eventually found its way These cathartic ventures behind him, Hernandez into a book, suggestively titled Fear of Comics then returned to his best-known creation, in a new (2000), which short-circuits expectations and defies series titled simply Luba (1998–2005). This post- easy summary. Mockingly playing on comic book Palomar series was set in the United States and formulas, and occasionally spilling over into free- promoted with a promise to make the material wheeling graphic experiments, this work is fitful, accessible to new readers. The marketing of this sometimes disturbing, but always playful and ener- series, with nominal focus on a single character, and getic. At the same time, Hernandez created the its packaging as a comic book in standard format, as “good girl” (a fan euphemism for sex- and pinup-ori- opposed to Love & Rockets’ magazine size, marked ented) adventure series Girl Crazy for another pub- a seeming surrender to the reigning logic of comic lisher, Dark Horse Comics, known chiefly for heroic book collectordom. In contrast, numerous alterna- fantasy. Frivolous and well-crafted, Girl Crazy (1997) tive cartoonists have recently abandoned the comic represents another funky genre outing, another seem- book per se in favor of different packages (the ing escape from the pressure of Hernandez’s ambi- comic book being by no means the only vehicle for tions. Its quaint science fiction landscape, female an artist of Hernandez’s reputation). Yet his embrace superheroes, and weird critters recall the fractured SF of the comic book was inspired not only by

105 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP pragmatic considerations but also by a growing New Love and Measles, a fan whose unselfcon- skepticism toward avant-garde or (in his phrase) “art scious engagement with comic books, like the young school” comics, which he has criticized for over- Luba’s in Poison River, harks back to the medium’s assertive packaging and a “cold, abstract” approach heyday as mass entertainment, before the funneling (Hernandez to the author, 22 Mar. 2000). By con- in of fan culture. Hernandez’s recent projects find trast, Luba and subsequent projects ally Hernandez him engaging the comic-book-as-social-object as with a more traditional comic book aesthetic and, never before, exploiting it with a wary nostalgia. notwithstanding the formal rigors of his work, an This is so despite the artist’s suspicion that comic approach to storytelling that privileges economy and book serials may never qualify as Art: “I feel art accessibility. comics, as in novels, shouldn’t have characters that Hernandez has also achieved the kind of break- continue after the piece” (Hernandez to the author, neck prolificacy associated with mainstream comic 22 Mar. 2000). Here he sells himself short: while this book artists. In the late nineties he went through an suspicion reflects long-lived aesthetic norms in liter- invigorating burst of productivity, for, alongside ary criticism (note the invocation of the novel as Luba, he produced several other comic books: point of comparison), it diminishes the achievement Measles (1998–2001), an eight-issue anthology for of Heartbreak Soup, in which the use of continuing younger readers, edited by Hernandez with contri- characters, and the tension between serial and nov- butions from others; Luba’s Comics and Stories (five elistic aims, yielded some of Hernandez’s strongest, issues to date, 2000–), an omnibus spinoff of Luba most provocative work. The economic and creative focusing on secondary characters; Goody Good tension between series and novel arguably accounts Comics (2000), a one-shot potpourri à la New Love; not only for Love & Rockets’ depth of setting and and, as illustrator, nine issues of cartoonist/writer character but also for its aggressive formal innova- Peter Bagge’s humor comic, Yeah!, published by tion: In order to build sustained, novel-length stories mainstream giant DC (1999–2000). More recently, from within a comics magazine, Los Bros Hernandez Hernandez has sortied into mainstream genre work, pushed the tension between single image and doing a blasé SF/crime thriller for DC titled Grip (five image-in-series to the extreme, so as to leap through issues, 2001–2002) and even a run as scriptwriter on time, interpolate new material in the “past,” and tell the Batman spinoff Birds of Prey, another take on and retell stories recursively. As confusing as this female superheroes (2002–2003). (This mainstream method could be to the uninitiated or occasional work strikes me as detached and juiceless, as if his reader, it developed out of the periodical mode, and ironic distancing from genre makes it hard for him to the meaningful gaps in reading offered by that take the work straight.) mode. Coming after Hernandez’s struggles to write nov- Yet Hernandez’s response to periodical form and els in serial form, this emphasis on periodical comic the commodity nature of comics remains ambiva- books is unexpected, and the sheer size of his output lent. While his recent comments on the comic book almost daunting. Yet this change was, perhaps, a “mainstream” have targeted the narrowness of the grab at freedom. If Hernandez wanted to be sprung industry and the exclusivity of collectors (see, for from the tight contours of Love & Rockets, he made example, “Destroy All Fanboys”), his own work his bid for independence through sheer, driving after Love & Rockets has been acutely aware of the effort, using the traditional comic book as his ticket comic book as such and has craftily capitalized on out. Notwithstanding the crisis of the latter-day the format. The six issues of New Love, for example, L&R, this recent explosion of work testifies to a balanced an ongoing serial with experimental short renewed faith in “the infinite artistic possibilities of features, the former anchoring the comic book and the comic book medium” (New Love No. 6). Those the latter exploiting it. While the serial aimed for a telling words belong to Luba’s niece, Venus, star of larger coherence, the individual comic book issues

106 GILBERT HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP reveled in their particularity. This artistic tug-of-war, work since 1996 continues to involve Luba and her endemic to periodical fiction, is central to Hernan- family, and a good chunk of this has been collected dez’s work, and indeed to alternative comics. in his recent book, Luba in America (2001). Gilbert Hernandez’s work continues to waver Luba in America, with its startling riffs on between upkeep of his established characters and Latino/a culture, media celebrity and (as ever) poly- more radical experiments. Once again he is linked to morphous sexuality, picks up where Gilbert’s “Letters Love & Rockets, for early in 2001 Gilbert and his from Venus” left off. Yet in a sense it is the grand- brothers Jaime and Mario Hernandez revived L&R as child of Poison River and Love and Rockets X, ravel- a triannual comic-book-sized series. This highly pro- ing out Luba’s (Maria’s) family line from the former moted relaunch, apparently driven partly by financial and exploring the Los Angeles set up in the latter. need, enjoyed heavy media coverage and recap- Again Luba is only the nominal focus: the story cov- tured many fans, despite the fact that Gilbert and ers many characters and spins out in short, giddy Jaime had been prolifically writing and drawing their flights, tighter and punchier than Gilbert’s novels of own respective comic books from 1996 onward. The yore. Luba’s character is continually enriched by the Love & Rockets title, Gilbert conceded, was “the unfolding story, but she is only one among the perfect showcase” for their efforts (Elder 4), and he many. The work, scrappily American, is in love with declared that “Volume II” would be their “second diversity and brims with decadent pleasures. wind” (Arnold 64). Outside of L&R, though, Gilbert Hernandez’s latest projects warrant their own remains prolific and unpredictable; he continues to considered treatment, beyond our scope here. work on his own Luba series (and its spinoffs), and Suffice to say that he remains restless and prolific also does occasional mainstream work for hire. and that he has reinvented himself more than once Perhaps as a result, his contributions to Love & since the end of the first Love & Rockets in 1996. Rockets Vol. 2 have thus far been all over the map. Behind his current work stands the monumental While Jaime has continued focusing on his signature Palomar, or, in its original form, Heartbreak Soup, an character Maggie, Gilbert has skipped around, re- extravagantly rich series that represents a bench- exploring beloved secondary characters, detailing mark for long-form comics—as well as a sobering the life of Luba’s half-sister Fritz, illustrating his example of the limits posed by serial publication. The brother Mario’s meandering thriller “Me for the reshaping and tightening of its core stories, Human Unknown,” and offering brief installments of Julio’s Diastrophism and Poison River, as revised for their Day, a series in a rural, Palomar-like setting yet book editions, suggest the enormity of the challenge unconnected to any previous work. Julio, which has Hernandez faced when turning this series into a gen- been billed as the life story of one man from birth to uine saga. Moreover, the fitful growth of that saga death, promises to be what Heartbreak Soup is not: shows how developments in narrative form (for a single tale, with “characters that [do not] continue example, the treatment of time) may be urged on by after the piece”; as such it may be Gilbert’s bid to the needs of the commercial medium. Finally and create an artistically autonomous novel. Gilbert has above all, what makes these questions worth pon- described it as a way of “get[ting] rid of the excess” dering is the excellence and urgency of the work of Palomar, focusing on a single tale, and “restrain- itself: a wayward masterwork, thirteen years in the ing himself” (Adams, “Return Flight” 26). Thus far, making, that exploits the inherent tensions of comic however, relatively little of Julio has appeared in art in the service of a brilliant literary imagination print. In the meantime, Gilbert’s most impressive and probing social vision.

107 CHAPTERCHAPTER FOUR 1

“I MADE THAT WHOLE THING UP!”

THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

About four-fifths into the comics memoir Our Cancer Year, lymphoma victim Harvey Pekar hauls himself out of bed, slowly, groggily—his mind addled by a psychoactive painkiller, his body numbed to near-paralytic heaviness as a result, apparently, of chemotherapy. Narcotized and reduced to merely “rocking through patterns,” Harvey continues to slip in and out of consciousness even after he stands. In fact he slips in and out of self-consciousness as well, for his mind keeps turning over that most basic of questions, “Who am I?” At the bottom of the page in question (fig. 39), Harvey rises with a wordless groan, head sagging. His image is dark, formed of heavy contour lines and brusque, energetic cross-hatching; his surroundings are white and detail- less, the panel that holds him borderless, exploded. The page itself, its surface broken into six panels, is organized and dominated by large patches of empty white space. In this open space, Harvey appears free, adrift, and very much in danger of losing himself. Turning the page, recto to verso, we face a much different surface (fig. 40), more fragmented yet also more claustrophobic. Images of varying size crowd together, some bordered, some not; some are defined by thin hatching, others by blobs of inky black. Across the top, two panels of dense brushwork show Harvey’s face in extreme close-up, a shadow against a shadowy background. Dry brushstrokes pick out his features—half-conscious in the first image, then alert in the second, as a title suddenly pops into his mind: American Splendor. Harvey’s eyes widen, staring directly at us as the distinctive logotype American Splendor appears in a thought balloon over his head. American

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Figure 39. Joyce Brabner, Harvey Pekar, and Frank Stack, Our Cancer Year (n. pag.). © Joyce Brabner and Harvey Pekar. Used with permission.

Splendor seems to be part of the answer to his ques- and art that autobiography can achieve. Harvey is the tion, “Who am I?”—but only that, a part. In the main character in the magazine/comic book series next tier of panels, he in effect reiterates the ques- American Splendor, and Pekar its scripter and guid- tion: seeing himself in a bathroom mirror, he turns to ing hand; though not interchangeable, the two are his wife Joyce (that is, Joyce Brabner) and asks, “Am one. Through its sporadic serialization (since 1976), I some guy who writes about himself in a comic American Splendor has offered readers a chance to book called American Splendor? . . . Or I am just a grow with both Harvey-the-persona and Pekar-the- character in that book?” Uncertain of who he is, author, always with the tantalizing possibility that Harvey stands naked, bereft and puzzled, isolated one might be collapsed into the other—or perhaps within a round frame that focuses everything on the not. Pekar has succeeded in mythologizing himself, question of his identity. Is he author and character, or transforming “Harvey” into a property that belongs just character? to him (or he to it?) but which nonetheless exceeds Harvey, obviously, is far gone. His body has him. By turns gregarious and recessive, openhearted betrayed his mind, and his mind, reduced to zero, now and suspicious, sensitive and coarse, the working- has to struggle to recover the fundamentals of his class hero of American Splendor emerges as a com- identity, in both personal and vocational terms. In plex, provoking character who just happens to bear short, Harvey must recover his sense of who he is. an unmistakable likeness to his creator.1 Even as this alarming sequence (co-written by Brabner Pekar’s achievement is to have established a new and Pekar, and drawn by Frank Stack) reveals the mode in comics: the quotidian autobiographical series, psychological and neuropathic fallout of cancer ther- focused on the events and textures of everyday exis- apy, it turns on a broader, more abstract issue: how tence. Joseph Witek’s groundbreaking study Comic we fashion our very selves through the stories we Books as History (1989) aptly describes this mode tell. Who is Harvey—creator, creation, or both? as one of consciously literary yet “aggressively hum- This is a question that readers of Pekar’s auto- drum” realism (128). For Pekar, such realism is a biographical comics have faced for the better part of matter of paying attention: his distinctive approach thirty years, for Pekar, more than any other comics depends on keen-eyed (and -eared) observation of author, has demonstrated the interpenetration of life anything and everything around him. His gift for

109 THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

Figure 40. Our Cancer Year (n. pag.). © Joyce Brabner and Harvey Pekar. Used with permission.

such observation is consistent with his voracious of this writing, of more than thirty magazine and appetite for knowledge; indeed, for Pekar autobiog- comic book issues and some six book-length compi- raphy is a means of autodidacticism, as his comics lations of stories from same (discounting the collab- represent a struggle for an understanding both emo- orative Our Cancer Year). tional and intellectual. American Splendor is a sus- In the course of assembling this body of work, tained inquiry into the underpinnings of daily life, Pekar has inspired a school of serialized comics auto- including the vicissitudes of economic competition; biography, including a slew of alternative comic book the social obstacles posed by class, occupation, gender, titles released between the latter 1980s and the mid- and ethnicity; and the cultural nuances of everyday 1990s: Colin Upton’s Big Thing, Ed Brubaker’s Lowlife, speech. The series observes all of these phenomena Dennis Eichhorn’s Real Stuff, the latter issues of from a defiantly personal, working-class perspective, Chester Brown’s Yummy Fur, the early issues of Seth’s offering an accretive autobiography that is at once Palookaville, Joe Matt’s Peepshow, Mary Fleener’s diverse, unpredictable, and organically unified. This Slutburger, Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte, Joe Chiapetta’s autobiography is impressive in scope, comprised, as Silly Daddy, and others. These titles have yielded a

110 THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS number of notable book collections, such as Brown’s underground period, brought a radical appreciation The Playboy (1992) and I Never Liked You (1994), for the mundane. Doucet’s My Most Secret Desire (1995), Fleener’s Life What has become of the comic book hero since of the Party (1996), Brubaker’s A Complete Lowlife then? As noted in chapter 1, current descriptions (1997), and Matt’s The Poor Bastard (1997). As these of the comic book industry assume a split between, titles suggest—note how so many of them are more on the one hand, a dominant fannish emphasis on confrontational than the quietly ironic American superpowered heroes, and, on the other, an alterna- Splendor—this new school of autobiographical comics tive, post-underground outlook, from which larger- has tended to stress the abject, the seedy, the anti- than-life heroism has been evacuated in favor of heroic, and the just plain nasty. If the method of this heady satire or in-your-face realism. This characteri- school has been documentary, the dominant narrative zation is of course overdetermined and somewhat modes have been tragedy, farce, and picaresque. reductive, reflecting decades of conflict within the In the wake of Pekar, these scarifying confessional industry itself (an industry still cramped by its repu- comics have in fact reinvented the comic book hero. tation for self-censorship and cupidity). Today’s alter- Now, heroism in comic books has never been sim- native comic books frequently attack this industry, ple. The heroic fantasies of early American comic reveling in their disavowal or cynical reappraisal of books were often shot through with inoculative doses the medium’s troubled history. Indeed, rejection of the of irony—grace notes of self-mockery that compro- corporatist “mainstream” gives the post-underground, mised their assertive bluster. Indeed, such saving irony alternative scene everything: its raison d’être, its core defines the founding examples of that arch-genre of readership, and its problematic, marginal, and self- comic books, the superhero, in which power must be marginalizing identity. It is here, on the activist end closeted or checked for the sake of preserving the of comic book culture, that autobiographical comics status quo. Yet it took the scabrous revelations of have flourished, overturning the corporate comics underground comix to radicalize this sense of irony, hero in favor of the particularized and unglamorous transforming amused suggestiveness into full-out common man or woman. polemic. Savage irony typified the undergrounds: as If alternative cartoonists acknowledge any sort of we have already seen, comix took the shopworn heroism, it consists in a collective effort to assert the industrial icons of yesteryear and invested them with versatility of comics as a means of expression, apart a new, anarchic, almost self-denunciatory energy. from the diversionary trappings of the escapist gen- This new mode demanded new “heroes.” res so entrenched in the American industry and fan- Underground comix admitted a new psychologi- dom. As Witek remarks, this effort represents “an cal realism and, concomitantly, a potential for radical implicit rejection of the death grip that fantasy has cultural intervention. Whereas comic books before long held” on the art form (History 153). Part of this had but nibbled, the undergrounds sunk their teeth project, Witek reminds us, is the promotion of into the very hands that fed them, venting a long comics that refuse fiction altogether, favoring history, pent-up energy that exploded the narrowly con- reportage, the essay, and the memoir. Thus “nonfic- ceived boundaries of the medium. The newly coined tion” comics have come into their own, and, in Pekar’s comix (as described in chapter 1) offered not only wake, autobiography has emerged as the nonfiction new economic terms and a new, more individualistic comic’s most familiar and accessible guise (rivaled model of production but also the necessary inspira- only recently by graphic journalism à la Joe Sacco). tion for these in a new level of adult and achingly In short, underground comix and their alternative personal content, both fantastic and, as time went descendants have established a new type of graphic on, naturalistic. From this brief, fecund period came confessional, a defiantly working-class strain of auto- the impetus for an exclusively adult species of graphic biography. Confronted by these new, highly personal narrative, to which Pekar, arriving at the end of the comics, the venerable cartoonist and teacher Burne

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Hogarth (whose own work embodies a fervid established a set of narrative conventions that con- Romanticism) once called them “a remarkable fulmi- tinue to shape alternative comics. nation of the inner light of people who have never In sum, this post-Pekar school of autobiography, had a voice” (Young, “Comic Art” 52). Even as he like the current comic book field as a whole, is a par- chided autobiographical cartoonists for the bleak- adox: a collision of mainstream commercial habits and ness of their work, Hogarth recognized that work as countercultural sensibility. Even as serial autobiogra- an historic novelty—and an extraordinary achieve- phy accommodates fandom’s emphasis on characters ment. The example of such cartoonists, coupled with and creators as heroes, it challenges the presumptive increasing access among part-timers and amateurs hold of fantasy on that market (the kernel of such fan- to affordable means of reproduction (for example, tasy being the superhero). To a field fed on the adven- photocopying, in the diffuse but vital field of mini- tures of glamorous übermenschen, autobiography comics), has turned autobiography into a mode of provides a salutary alternative with its schlemiels and central importance for alternative comics in North sufferers, hangdogs and gadflies. Yet its episodic, often America, and, increasingly, around the world (see, picaresque (Pekaresque?) nature still caters to the for example, Groensteen, “Les petites cases”). Indeed, outworn tradition of periodical comic book publishing this “problem child” of the undergrounds, as the (notwithstanding the success of Pekar’s book-length Comics Journal’s Frank Young once called it, has compilations in the mainstream press). Thus autobi- become the defining mode of comics’ self-styled ography has become a distinct, indeed crucial, genre counterculture (“Peeping Joe” 37). in today’s comic books—despite the troublesome fact Yet, paradoxically, such first-person comics can that comics, with their hybrid, visual-verbal nature, also appeal to the confirmed habits of “mainstream” pose an immediate and obvious challenge to the comic book fans and the industry that woos them. idea of “nonfiction.” While autobiographical comics represent, in Ray They can hardly be said to be “true” in any Zone’s phrase, a “necessary byroad” on the way straightforward sense. There’s the rub. But therein to maturity (Fleener 9), they also accommodate lies much of their fascination. fandom’s preset habits of consumption, insofar as autobiographical comic book series are well adapted to the market’s emphasis on continuing characters, IDEOLOGY, ACCURACY, INTIMACY ongoing stories, and periodical publication. In this case, the autobiographer’s cartoon persona supplies As a genre, autobiography is of course difficult to continuity, while the use of “real life” as inspiration define and well nigh impossible to delimit. Protean in insures a bottomless fund of raw material. Indeed, a form, it applies the narrative techniques of fiction to number of creators have sustained fairly long autobi- stories implicitly certified as “true,” insofar as they ographical series (such as those listed above), series defer to a level of experience “outside” the bounds containing both novel-length stories in piecemeal of text. The tacit rules of the genre demand fidelity form and shorter stories well suited to comic book or to such experience, yet storytelling demands license; magazine format. Telling tales about yourself is a gig narrative needs shaping. Thus autobiography inevitably that can go on forever, or at least for a very long mingles the factual and the fictive (even among the time. No wonder, then, that during the eighties such most scrupulous of practitioners). This blurring of comics became, in the words of a bemused Art boundaries presents a conundrum that criticism has Spiegelman, “a real growth industry” (“Symptoms” been able only to turn over and over, never to 4). This “industry” has since downsized—as we’ll resolve: what has storytelling to do with the facts? In see, autobiographical comics soon came under attack the words of Timothy Dow Adams, autobiography as the latest cliché, and few of the above-named is a paradox, “a therapeutic fiction-making, rooted projects are still ongoing—but by now the genre has in what really happened; and judged both by the

112 THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS standards of truth and falsity and by the standards of (Groth and Fiore 215). As Witek has suggested, success as an artistic creation” (Telling Lies 3). Pekar’s work resists this culture through “the asser- If academic criticism has fretted over this paradox, tion of individuality” (History 149). In this light, the autobiographers in comics have often barreled ahead personal is indeed political; as cartoonist Justin Green without confronting it as such. Though some have rec- implies in his seminal Binky Brown Meets the Holy ognized that the genre isn’t about literal but rather Virgin Mary (1972), “social issues” and individual about emotional truths, many have taken as gospel “neuroses” are irrevocably linked (Green 10). (We Pekar’s dictum that persuasiveness resides in literal will return to Binky in our next chapter.) Ray Zone accuracy, in minute fidelity to “mundane events” as cements this connection between personal and polit- they happen. “The more accurate,” according to ical in his introduction to the work of Mary Fleener: Pekar, “the more readers can identify with them” the “explicit foreground ‘subject’” of autobiography (“Potential” 84). The goal is absolute “honesty,” (that is, the autobiographer him or herself) stands in and in particular the disclosure of, to paraphrase the a dialectic tension with the “implicit background cartoonist Seth, things that “the regular media” ‘object’” of culture (Zone 11). Thus autobiography ignore (Seth, Brown, and Matt 52).2 in comics, as in prose, often zeroes in on the contact If autobiographical comics can be considered a surface between cultural environment and individual movement, then its manifesto would seem to be identity. Indeed, therein lies much of its impetus, and Pekar’s vision of “a literature that pushes people into value, as Witek observes of Pekar’s work (History their lives rather than helping people escape from 149–52 passim). them” (Groth and Fiore 215). Since 1976 Pekar has What makes such implicitly political content pos- realized this vision in American Splendor as well as sible is Pekar’s ideal of conformity to the facts of Our Cancer Year (1994), his collaborative memoir one’s experience. Of course, as soon as we say this with his wife Joyce Brabner and illustrator Frank Stack. we are in trouble, for Pekar’s ethic of accuracy runs The former examines Harvey’s social and occupa- counter to the epistemological skepticism of our age. tional world in painstaking detail, highlighting the How can one be faithful to objective “truth” when quiet, epiphanous moments that give life flavor and such truth seems inaccessible or even impossible? resonance (and, increasingly, offering Harvey’s biog- How in fact can we speak (as above) of “a level of raphical studies of other people). The latter conflates experience ‘outside’ the bounds of text,” when con- the personal and the political, detailing both Harvey’s temporary theory teaches us that to apprehend real- battle against lymphoma and Joyce and Harvey’s ity is to textualize it from the get-go? Therein lies anxious engagement with global politics during the the impetus for a current of skepticism in both auto- Persian Gulf War. American Splendor mixes dour biography theory and, increasingly, autobiographical naturalism with Pekar’s self-conscious, first-person comics. The balance of this chapter will examine the narration, which betrays the rhythmic influence of ways in which comics struggle to absorb and capital- standup comedy and his own experience as a street- ize on this skeptical or self-critical tendency. corner performer (Groth and Fiore 216, 223). Our Paul Jay sums up the skeptical position thusly: Cancer Year, on the other hand, abandons Pekar’s “the attempt to differentiate between autobiogra- narrational shtick, combining documentary accuracy phy and fictional autobiography is finally pointless” with Stack’s expressionistic rendering to capture the (Being in the Text 16). This view is widely shared rigors of cancer treatment. Both projects show a among literary critics; many have argued that auto- keen eye for the minutiae of day-to-day existence. biography is no more privileged or “truthful” than Such projects have an ideological subtext—speci- fiction-making (regarding this argument, see, for fically, a democratic one—since they celebrate the example, Adams, Telling Lies; Eakin; and Zinsser). endurance and everyday heroism of “the so-called Indeed by now it would seem that, as Adams puts average person” in the face of corporatist culture it, “the presence of fiction within autobiography is

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[regarded as] no more problematic than the pres- exaggeration, distortion, and omission. Such ten- ence of nonfiction within the novel” (Light Writing dencies become doubly obvious in the cartoon world xi). The issue remains a live one for the as-yet little- of comics, in which the intimacy of an articulated studied genre of autobiographical comics, in which first-person narrative may mix with the alienating ideologically fraught claims to truth collide with an graphic excess of caricature. One may fairly ask how anxious distrust of referentiality (a distrust aggra- a cartoonist can use these disparate tools without vated by the inevitable backlash against autobiogra- seeming to falsify his or her experience. If autobiog- phy as a market genre). Yet, ironically, the disavowal raphy promiscuously blends fact and fiction, memory of objective truth may serve to shore up the genre’s and artifice, how can comics creators uphold Pekar’s claims to veracity; indeed, grappling with such skep- ethic of authenticity? How can they achieve the ticism would seem prerequisite to recognizing and effect of “truthfulness?” fully exploiting the genre’s potential for truth-telling. Only by exploring such doubts can the emotional “honesty” of autobiography be recovered. THE CARTOON SELF Salvaging the genre’s claims to truth means res- cuing its potential for radical cultural argument—and In comics, such questions inevitably have to do with there is something radical about the intimacy of appearances, in particular the graphic likeness of the graphic self-representation. Autobiographical comics autobiographical protagonist and its relation to the since the late seventies, inspired by Pekar’s mundane artist’s own sense of self. If autobiography has much observations as well as the grotesque confessions of to do with the way one’s self-image rubs up against cartoonists such as Dori Seda and Justin Green, have the coarse facts of the outer world, then comics make decisively stressed what Pekar himself calls “unpleas- this contact immediate, and graphic. We see how ant facts” (Groth and Fiore 216). These facts include the cartoonist envisions him or herself; the inward the kinds of psychosexual and scatological details vision takes on an outward form. This graphic self- that tend to escape even the most adventurous representation literalizes a process already implicit mainstream fiction. Cartoonists such as Aline in prose autobiography, for, as Stephen Shapiro has Kominsky-Crumb (Love that Bunch!) and Joe Matt argued, the genre consists less in faithfulness to out- (Peepshow), to take two well-known examples, have ward appearances, more in the encounter between staked out the very frontiers of self-exposure, spot- “successive self-images” and the world, a world that lighting their own manias and fears with a frankness repeatedly distorts or misrecognizes those self-images and insistence that amount to a compulsive howl (Shapiro 426). If autobiography is a kind of rhetori- of despair. Whereas Pekar himself (as Witek has cal performance in which one, as Shapiro says, tries observed) has retreated from such harrowing inti- to “persuade the world to view one’s self through macy, in favor of focusing more intently on his intel- one’s own eyes,” then autobiographical comics make lectual and social milieu (History 127), many this seeing happen on a quite literal level, by envi- autobiographical comics of the eighties and nineties sioning the cartoonist as a cartoon. This is the auto- privilege the most minute and shocking details of biographical comic’s most potent means of persuasion: their authors’ lives. It is this intimacy that authenti- the self-caricature. cates their social observations and arguments. Prerequisite to such caricature, it would seem, is a Still the question persists, how “true” can these form of alienation or estrangement, through which self-centered reflections be? How accurate? At some the cartoonist–autobiographer regards himself as point the appearance of bracing “honesty” runs the other, as a distinct character to be seen as well as risk of hardening into a self-serving, repetitive shtick. heard. Yet, as Paul Jay has suggested, such a process Despite the implied claim to truth that anchors the of becoming an object, indeed a parody of oneself, genre, the autobiographer’s craft necessarily includes may enable a subject “to choose, and thus control,

114 THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS identity” (“Posing” 210). Objectification of the self, or her. Thus the cartoonist projects and objectifies his through visual representation, may actually enable or her inward sense of self, achieving at once a sense the autobiographer to articulate and uphold his or of intimacy and a critical distance. her own sense of identity. It is the graphic exploitation of this duality that Jay arrives at this conclusion through the study of distinguishes autobiography in comics from most photography. Writing on the relationship between autobiography in prose. Unlike first-person narration, photos, visual memory and self-representation, he which works from the inside out, describing events asserts that a photographic portrait, while seeming as experienced by the teller, cartooning ostensibly to force its subject into a posed and thus inauthentic works from the outside in, presenting events from guise, may actually open up opportunities for com- an (imagined) position of objectivity, or at least dis- mentary and resistance, insofar as the objective image tance.3 William Lowell Randall, in The Stories We may be reappropriated, internalized, and subjectified Are, makes just such a distinction between events (209–10). Knowledge of how one looks, or can look, (things that happen) and our experience of events may be enabling for the individual subject, inasmuch (the way we regard things that happen). By his argu- as such knowledge allows him or her to grapple with ment, events are “outside” us, while experience is and transform that “look.” Indeed, as Linda Haverty “inside.” Going further—into territory oddly apropos Rugg observes of writer Christa Wolf, “it becomes of comics—Randall distinguishes between the stories necessary to imagine the self as photo-object [fr. we may tell about ourselves, expression, and the German Fotoobjekt] in order to begin the process of stories others may construct about us, based on out- self-knowledge” (Picturing Ourselves 214–15). ward impression (54–57). In brief, expression works Such self-objectification necessarily precedes or from the inside out, while impression works from the informs autobiography, for the genre represents outside in. Yet, complicating Randall, we might say nothing less than (in Rugg’s phrase) “an exertion of that to tell a story of yourself in comics is to seek control over self-image” (4). Like the subversive self- expression through outward impressions, because mockery of those subalterns who reappropriate hate- comics tend to present rather than narrate—or, at ful epithets for their own ends, a cartoonist may times, alternately present and narrate. Comic art’s actually find him or herself through a broad, car- presentational (as opposed to discursive) mode toony, in some sense stereotypic self-depiction. Such appears to problematize, or at least add a new wrin- visualization can play a vital role in the understand- kle to, the ex/impression dichotomy. ing and affirmation of individual identity; paradoxi- Cartooning does work from the outside in, using cally, playing with one’s image can be a way of culturally significant stereotypes (for example, in style, asserting the irreducibility of the self as agent. facial features, and posture) to convey impressions The cartoon self-image, then, seems to offer a of people that are seemingly spontaneous yet deeply unique way for the artist to recognize and external- coded (that is, ideologically motivated). As many ize his or her subjectivity. In this light, comics auto- cartoonists and critics have observed, stereotypes biography may not be alienating so much as radically are the raw material of cartooning, hence of comics; enabling. As Susan Stanford Friedman has argued of even relatively realistic comic art draws on represen- women’s autobiography, the form may allow the artist tational and cultural codes that depend on typing to break free from “historically imposed image[s]” (see Töpffer 15–17; Eisner, Comics 101 and Story- and to fashion “an alternative self” (Benstock 83). telling 17; Ware in Juno 39–40). Yet, as Art Yet, at the same time, the placement of this self- Spiegelman has argued, sustained comics narrative image among other figures within a visual narrative has the power to individualize the stereotype, dis- confers an illusion of objectivity. Seeing the protago- mantling it in whole or in part (“Drawing” 17–18). nist or narrator, in the context of other characters Thus characterization is not limited to blunt types, and objects evoked in the drawings, objectifies him even though it may exploit them. Our own sense of

115 THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS identity may develop through a similar process, as we of expressionistic effects. Again, “outside-in” and choose, explore, and discard successive stereotypic “inside-out” blur together. “selves” that act as rough approximations of the Comics, then, despite their speciously “outside-in” hoped-for “inner” self we but vaguely apprehend.4 approach, can evoke an author’s internal self-concept, To be sure, the use of such images may impose lim- insofar as the act of self-portraiture encourages a sim- itations on the autobiographer. Elizabeth Bruss has plified, exaggerated depiction of known or desired argued, regarding autobiography in film, that visual attributes. In brief, the outward guise reflects inward self-portrayal drives a wedge between the “expres- attitudes: objectification enables self-understanding sive” and “descriptive” functions of autobiography, and self-transformation. Indeed, it may be that all whereas language conflates the two. First-person nar- self-recognition depends on such a dialectic between rative, says Bruss, allows the “I” as subject of expres- inward recognition and outward semblance. McCloud’s sion and “I” as object of description to blur together: Understanding Comics lends popular support to this “In speaking ‘I’ merges easily, almost inextricably, with view, arguing that we continually intuit our sense of another ‘I’ whose character and adventures I can claim our own appearance in broadly “iconic” (McCloud as my own” (306–7). In contrast, visual representation means cartoony) terms. By his argument, the face we divides expression from description, posing “an envision, the face we put on, is a mental cartoon of a impassable barrier” between observer and observed. face, an abstract construct that guides our sense of In film, then, the autobiographical subject cannot help what we “say” with our looks (34). but break down into a “person seeing” and a “person This claim is of course debatable (are our facial seen.” Cinema, she concludes, “dismantles” self-con- expressions guided mainly by internalized cartoons?). sciousness, which she regards as an effect of language More troublingly, McCloud overextends the argu- (317). Yet it seems clear that visual self-depiction is ment into a naïve model of reader response: because not wholly void of expressive potential, even in the self-recognition involves a degree of simplification, supposedly neutral and pitiless medium of photogra- he claims that highly simplified, cartoony images phy, for, as photographer Dana Asbury has said of invite reader “involvement.” In other words, cartoons photographic self-portraits, the manipulated likeness become loci for “identification” through their very includes not just information but “emotional inter- simplicity (42). In this McCloud follows the notion of pretation” as well (“Photographing the Interior”). the “beholder’s share” as put forth by E. H. Gombrich: The photographer can work introspectively, though “We tend to project life and expression onto the in an external, seemingly unself-conscious medium. arrested image and supplement from our own expe- This applies even more obviously to drawn self- rience what is not actually present” (17). Like portraits, in which emotional interpretation often McCloud, Gombrich describes the face as a “mask,” exceeds and even sabotages literal description. one built out of “crude distinctions” that we gener- The huge expressive potential of self-portraiture is ally take in “before we notice the face” as such (13). argued by, for example, Joan Kinneir in The Artist by Yet McCloud errs in, one, assuming the universality Himself, an anthology of self-portrait drawings: of these culturally coded distinctions or attributes “[Self-portraiture] gives us access to an intimate sit- (36); and two, arguing that the reader identifies with uation in which we see the artist at close quarters or is “sucked into” the cartoon image in some from a privileged position in the place of the artist him- absolute sense (42). The claim for universality is self and through his own eyes” (15). The impossibility undone by McCloud’s own observations about (barring mirrors) of this happening in a literal sense— the differences between the graphic symbols used both observing and being observed—adds to the in different cultures, specifically differences between fascination of self-portraiture as a genre. Cartooning, expressive conventions in western comics and Japanese shorn of the referential literalness expected in photo- manga (131). More to the point, the argument for graphy, freely partakes of this paradox with a variety identification runs afoul of the visual nature of

116 THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS comics, for, as Bruss reminds us, visual narrative abstract his own character, in the form of simplified tends to dismantle the first-person point of view, diagrams and nuanced dialogue. Such self-knowledge dividing the person seeing from the person seen is primarily verbal. (Note, though, that the dominant (307). The logical principles or signifying practices of examples of comics autobiography after Pekar have comics, no less than film, militate against a thor- been by cartoonists working alone, achieving a oughgoing identification of observer and observed. degree of control, and at times a solipsistic self- While a limited claim might be made for reader regard, which would seem to be denied to Pekar’s empathy, positing complete identification stretches collaborative approach.) the case beyond credulity (regarding the vexed issue In sum the cartoon self enacts a dialectic tension of “identification,” see Barker, Comics; Frome). between impression and expression, outer and inner, Yet, though the connection between reader and extrinsic and intrinsic approaches to self-portrayal. cartoon may not be as absolute as McCloud claims, While the written text in a comic may confide in there does seem to be an intimate connection between the reader much like unaccompanied, first-person cartoonist and cartoon—a claim that depends nei- prose, the graphic presence of the image at once ther on universality nor on absolute psychological distances and inflects the autobiographer’s voice. identification. The crux of the matter is the way the Whereas first-person prose invites complicity, cartoonist chooses among expressive conventions to cartooning invites scrutiny. Hence the curious create a cartoon “likeness” (more accurately, sign) detachment, the semblance of objectivity, which that conforms to his/her inward sense of self. As critic Frank Young observes in such post-Pekar car- Perry Nodelman observes (apropos of picture book toonists as Chester Brown and Joe Matt (“Peeping illustration), such a highly simplified portrait consti- Joe” 38). It’s a fiction of “honesty.” Yet what hap- tutes not a literal likeness so much as an inventory of pens when this external self-image, this visual per- abstract attributes: a horizontal line can stand in for sona, becomes unfixed? What if it warps or mutates, a mouth, a vertical for a nose, two dots for eyes, and and thus betrays the artist’s shaping hand? so on (28). These attributes are understood, not as resemblances, but as symbols, rather like words; verbal recognition of features precedes the cartoon THE SELF AS SUCCESSIVE SELVES encoding of same. Visual self-portrayal thus enacts a self-understanding that is at least partly verbal in Cartoonist Dan Clowes dives into this very possibility nature. Though seemingly “objective,” the outward in his four-page rant, “Just Another Day” (from his image in fact mirrors an internalized, abstract Eightball No. 5, 1993, reprinted in Twentieth Century self-concept—a self-consciousness prerequisite to Eightball), a reductio ad absurdum of quotidian personal narrative. autobiographical comics. In this satire, Clowes, then If this is so, then Harvey Pekar’s creative process known for caustic, cynical essays in comics form, precisely mirrors this transition from verbal under- manipulates his own persona to expose the impossi- standing to visual expression. Pekar scripts his comics bility of telling the truth in comics, while ridiculing the through rough, stick-figure breakdowns and verbal excesses of disclosure seen in Pekar, Kominsky-Crumb, notes, which he then passes on to various illustrators and others. Reinventing his visual image from panel to complete. As Witek points out, the artists must to panel, Clowes reveals “Dan Clowes” himself to translate these verbal and symbolic inventories into be as plastic and imaginary as any other comics char- complete pictures, adding in the process new visual acter. As the story nears its end (fig. 41), Clowes information that complicates Pekar’s persona (History leaps from one stereotypic self-image to another, 137). Perhaps it is no accident that Pekar, a writer while torn, discarded pages representing the other rather than artist, pioneered the autobiographical versions of himself pile up on the floor, ultimately comics series, for as a writer he had to know how to obscuring his features in a morass of crumpled

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Figure 41. Dan Clowes, “Just Another Day.” Twentieth Century Eightball 47 (excerpt). © Daniel Clowes. Used with permission. paper. The point, finally, is obvious: what passes for falsehood, one by one. On the first page, we find a frankness in comics must be a matter of both subjec- bleary-eyed Clowes doing his morning wake-up rou- tive vision and graphic artifice, a shotgun wedding of tine before a bathroom mirror. Graphic license is at the untrustworthy and the unreal. a minimum here, so that the “Clowes” character From the outset, Clowes trades on known facts appears evenly proportioned and realistic (that is, about himself and his work. Since so many of his true to the conventions of comic book realism). The comics rely on thinly fictionalized personae, Clowes second page, however, reveals the scam, as Clowes’ starts “Just Another Day” with a panel, a title card so stand-in is abruptly recontextualized within a very to speak, that explicitly identifies him, the genuine different milieu—that of a Hollywood movie set, in “Daniel G. Clowes,” as both creator and protagonist which Clowes, the so-called “real” Clowes this time, (fig. 42). Yet right away something seems oddly off acts as director as well as cartoonist (fig. 43). Clowes- about this credit line, for the name “Daniel G. Clowes” the-director pauses in his drawing to “talk to the bears the symbol for a registered trademark, as readers,” offering an explicit version of the rationale if Clowes himself is but a marketable property, a that, tacitly, lies behind autobiographical comics: “If character to be variously drawn and exploited, ad I show the minutae [sic] of my daily life truthfully, no infinitum. Throughout the story arrows point to “the matter how embarrassing or painful, maybe you’ll Real Clowes,” or “the Real Real Clowes,” even as the respond to that truth and realize that we perhaps possibility of a “real” Clowes recedes infinitely, van- share the same unspoken human traits and you and ishing behind a succession of disparate caricatures: I will have a beautiful artist/reader experience. Dig?” the average joe, the “big-shot wheeler-dealer,” the (45). Thus Clowes distills and mocks Pekar’s ethic of “sensitive artiste,” and so on. The story’s closing cap- fidelity to mundane truths. This smug explanation tion, which reads “etc., etc.,” suggests both that these reduces the implicit aims of autobiography to a numb- permutations could go on forever and that Clowes ing banality. By making the intent explicit, Clowes finds the very prospect of confessional comics absurd. short-circuits it. “Just Another Day” warrants a closer look because As his story shifts into cool satire, Clowes begins of the brilliant way in which it peels back layers of to reshape, graphically, his very self, resorting to blunt

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Figure 42. Clowes, “Just Another Day.” 44 (excerpt). © Daniel Clowes. Used with permission. caricature. For instance, the head of the so-called about yourself. . . . It’s almost impossible to be objec- “real” Clowes, unlike his stand-in’s, seems grotesquely tive.” The difficulty lies, he suggests, in the artist’s out of proportion to the rest of his body, while his own ever-changing self-image, and the possibility toothy smile and slitted eyes advertise his insincerity. that even full disclosure will be received as mere The sequence that follows (in which the stand-in rhetorical posturing: “[I]f you are willing to embarrass “Clowes” sniffs his dirty socks, echoing the grotty yourself you have to make sure it’s not just to show intimacy of such cartoonists as Kominsky-Crumb what a cool, honest guy you are . . .” (47). Even and Joe Matt) restores the graphic “realism” of the complete “honesty,” Clowes implies, serves some first page, but now in brackets, for we know that the self-inflating purpose. entire sequence is a put-on. Broad caricature returns “Just Another Day,” though extraordinarily smart, as the director “Clowes” unpacks this scene, debunk- is not unprecedented; in fact it seizes on an idea put ing the always implied claim that such embarrassing forth rather offhandedly some twenty-one years details are representative rather than just plain weird: before, by comix pioneer R. Crumb, in his two-page “I made that whole thing up!” he gloats. “I’ve never strip “The Many Faces of R. Crumb” (XYZ Comics, done anything like that in my life!!” The reader who 1972, reprinted in Complete Crumb, vol. 9). “Many identifies with such scenes, he sneers, must be a Faces” (fig. 44) presents almost twenty distinct per- “fucking sicko!!” (46). By this time the so-called “real sonae within its twenty panels. Crumb’s strip boasts Clowes” has become a familiar Clowesian type: the no narrative or discursive continuity like Clowes’s but swollen epitome of smarmy self-satisfaction. instead rattles off a list of discrete and seemingly What follows is a strangled mea culpa for the incompatible personalities: “the long-suffering patient story’s overlapping falsehoods, as Clowes shifts from artist-saint,” for instance, or the “sentimental slob,” cell-phone-wielding “big shot” to hand-wringing or “the youth culture member in good standing.” “artiste,” and thence to diverse other stereotypes. Billed simply as “an inside look at the complex Staring into the mirror at one point, in an echo of the personality” of the artist, “Many Faces” offers no story’s opening, the “Clowes” character drives home rationale apart from its central question, implied until the crucial point that “it’s weird trying to do comics the very end, “Who is this Crumb?” Yet, anticipating

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Figure 43. Clowes, “Just Another Day.” 45 (excerpt). © Daniel Clowes. Used with permission.

Clowes, Crumb places the very act of creation at the that the drawings serve Crumb’s desires for acquisi- heart of the strip; the strip asserts its own construct- tion and mastery. As so often in Crumb, confession edness. As throughout XYZ Comics, and indeed much tips over immediately into lampoon, palliating the of Crumb’s work from this period, the primacy of bitter truth, but the point has been made: both drawing as a subject serves to connect what would Crumb’s elastic sense of self and his treatment of otherwise be a freewheeling series of non sequiturs. others are shaped by his feelings and desires. Thus Indeed, drawing is foremost in Crumb’s mind. these two apparently anomalous panels at the top The first panel shows Crumb masturbating to one of of the story prepare for the parade of images to fol- his own so-called “sick cartoons,” while a caption low. The real subject of what follows, after all, is not tells us that he is “‘hard’ at work in [his] studio.” Thus so much the “truth” about Crumb himself as his abil- an intimacy between artist and art is established: ity, through drawing, to impose an arbitrary vision on Crumb takes sexual pleasure in his own handiwork. the world and on himself. The drawings may be con- From the outset, then, the real and the drawn are fused with the real, but Crumb reminds us that they purposefully confused. Crumb asserts both the almost are neither true nor sufficient in themselves. palpable reality of his drawings and their artificiality. Throughout the remaining eighteen panels Crumb This giddy image of masturbation leads logically assumes various guises, many of which, such as artist- into the next panel, which reveals that the cartoonist saint, booshwah businessman, and media superstar, gets what he wants by “drawing a picture of the testify to his ambivalence about passing from private desired object.” Here the drawing equates a woman self to public personality. (This ambivalence saturates with a Lincoln Continental and a stack of old 78 rpm XYZ Comics as well as the contemporaneous People’s records, while the cartoon Crumb leers in anticipa- Comix.) The very random, non-narrative quality of tion—a moment of crassness bracing in its candor this series also testifies to the plasticity of the artist’s yet typical of Crumb’s work. The vision of Crumb self-image, in a way that Clowes’s more argumenta- himself has changed from one panel to the next; more tive approach cannot: if none of these images is important, the second panel acknowledges Crumb’s adequate to unlock the “real” Crumb, then all are solipsism, both through its candid dehumanization nonetheless part of the way he sees himself. As Crumb of the woman and through the text’s recognition says in the end, again prefiguring Clowes, “It all

120 Figure 44. R. Crumb, “The Many Faces of R. Crumb,” first page. The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol. 9, page 21. © 2004 R. Crumb. Used with permission. 121 THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

depends on the mood I’m in!!” It is the drawing that revelations about Hernandez’s adolescence and gives these momentary, untrustworthy impressions family life are wrapped in the clichés of superheroics, the weight of truth. science fiction, and funny animals. This aggressive unpacking of the cartoonist’s per- Throughout this scattershot collection, certain ideas sona anticipates the problems of authenticity later repeat themselves. Maternal discipline, for instance, is encountered by the post-Pekar generation. In response a recurrent theme: harshly punished by mother, both to that generation, a similar antagonism marks Gilbert the cute li’l pig of the strip “Pig” and the superhero Hernandez’s bizarre parody of the genre, titled “My of the story “Bully” talk to God in prayer. (God, of Love Book” (from the achingly self-conscious penul- course, takes the mother’s side.) Hernandez’s Hispanic timate issue of the original Love & Rockets, 1995, background and the racism he presumably endured reprinted in Hernandez Satyricon). If Crumb revels in because of it come up in “Bully” as well as the gag strip the plasticity of his persona, and Clowes uses multiple “The Artist.” Bedwetting is a motif in both “Bully” and selves to attack autobiography’s claims to truth, then the cruel “And So It Was,” which suggests guilty mem- “Love Book” goes further still. Prompted by a con- ories of his father’s death. Adolescent sexual desire fessed impatience with the autobiographical comics informs both “Loser in Love” and “Valentine,” the genre (Young, “Comic Art” 55), Hernandez teases latter a remembrance of Gilbert’s courtship with his the reader with a disjointed series of confessional wife, Carol, mockingly certified by “the Carol Seal of vignettes, between which his visual personae shift so Veracity.” Such thematic repetition lends a sense of radically that we can confirm their common identity unity to an otherwise random assortment of tales. only through the repetition of certain motifs in dia- Like our Crumb and Clowes examples, “My Love logue and action. Over its fourteen pages, “Love Book” is arch and self-reflexive. Among other things, Book” offers not only a bewildering array of formats the story serves as a sidelong commentary on (three-page stories, single-pagers, and brief strips) but the impending end of Love & Rockets, which had also a string of bizarre Gilbert-inspired protagonists: served Gilbert and his brother Jaime as a personal a young superhero-as-bedwetter; an Edward Munch- anthology for some thirteen years (see chapter 3). esque critter; even an anthropomorphic pig (fig. 45). As a departure from Gilbert’s usual work, “Love Book” As the artist’s own image metamorphoses, generic flirts with the reader’s prior knowledge, beginning conventions are yanked out of joint: seeming with a two-page teaser in which Gilbert and Jaime

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Figure 46. Hernandez, “My Love Book.” 57 (excerpt). © 2004 Gilbert Hernandez. Used with permission. assume the role of heroes in a ham-fisted commentary embroidered, of Hernandez’s personae: a flaccid, on their own careers (fig. 46). Facing “the moment pudgy self-portrait in sharp contrast to the heroic of truth”—implicitly, the end of Love & Rockets— ideal at the story’s start (fig. 48). (This antiheroic the two artists declare that this will be, not an end, self-image, incidentally, has reappeared in Gilbert’s but a “grand new beginning,” from which there can subsequent work.) Haunted by his principal characters, be “no turning back!” (57). Thus “Love Book” as well as the then-recent death of the much-loved points to itself in a manner similar to Crumb and cartoonist Jack Kirby, this Gilbert looks back at his Clowes; the primacy of the artist is ironically asserted career in comics, musing, “It wasn’t such a bad gig, at the outset. was it?” (67). Gazing at several slogans, taped to his On the following page (fig. 47) Gilbert prepares studio wall like so many Post-It notes, Gilbert says what he calls an “effigy” to act in the story of his with bitter humor, “Heh . . . Can’t believe I ever life. In an echo of James Whale’s film Frankenstein wrote this shit . . . Wonder if I ever really believed (Universal, 1931), Gilbert’s roly-poly assistant “Nixon” it?” These bumper sticker-like messages again desta- replaces the effigy’s “normal penis” with an abnor- bilize the artist’s persona, since they seem at odds mal one. Thus the effigy, wound in a false skin and with the portrait of Hernandez that emerges through sporting a shriveled member, is already a Franken- other stories and even in “Love Book” itself. Thus even steinian mishap, a patchwork man of dubious authen- this final, low-key persona is awash in ambiguity. Its ticity. Leaning over his drawing board, the artist orders fictionality is finally underscored by the impossible, sui- his assistant, “Get me—I mean it into position,” a cidal climax, as, in a self-conscious echo of Nirvana’s moment of confusion that suggests the impossibility Kurt Cobain, Gilbert shoots himself in the mouth.5 of an authentic autobiographical comic. This effigy The story’s last panel manages to be at once risi- prepares us for the various personae that inhabit the ble and disturbing, the bloody suicide commenting following pages. acidly on the pending conclusion of Love & Rockets. “My Love Book” ends with brutal pessimism, with The fatal image also adverts to, again, the limits of what at first seems the most straightforward, or least autobiography. With this bitter irony, “Love Book”

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Figure 47. Hernandez, “My Love Book.” 58 (excerpt). © 2004 Gilbert Hernandez. Used with permission. muddies its own implicit assertion of truth. Who is of experience to the hindsight of exposition, the rig- this Gilbert? The assertive hero of the opening, sure ors and temptations of storytelling—what George of a grand destiny? Or the pathetic, crapped-out Gusdorf calls “the original sin . . . of logical coherence caricature of wasted talent shown at the end? Perhaps, and rationalization” (Gusdorf 41).6 Yet by flaunting as Crumb asserts, it all depends on the artist’s mood. the falseness of their personae, Crumb, Clowes, and In the last analysis, what are the above stories Hernandez reconfirm the power of comics to convey after? What do they reveal? If autobiographical comix something like the truth. Artifice and candor go hand take as their starting point a polemical assertion of in hand. This fundamental irony comes into sharper truth over fantasy, then these comics serve to reassert focus if, following Timothy Dow Adams, we invoke the fantastic, distorting power of the artist’s craft Merle Brown’s distinction between the fictive and and vision. They carry us to the vanishing point where the fictitious: a story may be fictive yet truthful, imagination and claims to truth collide. Yet these insofar as it “implies as part of itself the art of its pieces still demand and play on the reader’s trust; making”; in contrast, a story (autobiographical or they still purport to tell truths. Crumb, Clowes, and otherwise) that does not acknowledge its own mak- Hernandez, finally, do not disallow autobiography as ing is merely fictitious (Brown 62; Adams, Telling such, but ironically reaffirm its power by demanding Lies 11). The fictive, then, problematizes itself, while recognition of its implicit assumptions. Ultimately, the the merely fictitious strives for transparency. implied compact between author and reader—what By Brown’s criterion, these three stories are fictive Philippe Lejeune famously called the autobiographi- but not fictitious, for they acknowledge their own cal pact—is upheld even as it is abused (see Lejeune construction too frankly. While these tales revel in 3–30 for discussion of autobiography as a “contrac- artifice, in the end they present the artist’s own tech- tual” genre). niques to us with such self-critical candor that implied claims to truth, though now bracketed, still inform our reading. These tales bear out Paul John Eakin’s FICTIVE BUT NOT FICTITIOUS observation that “[a]utobiographers themselves constitute a principal source of doubt about the validity In a sense, the above stories assert truthfulness of [their] art” (276); yet this doubt, this radical self- through falsity. Comics, like any form of narrative, questioning, reinforces rather than corrodes the seem- can falsify circumstances by subjecting the vagaries ing veracity of autobiography, for the texts’ admissions

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Figure 48. Hernandez, “My Love Book.” 67 (excerpt). © 2004 Gilbert Hernandez. Used with permission. of artifice defer the question of trustworthiness to a and making demands on his/her sophistication. new level, that of the very act of creation. Here is Through deconstructive playfulness, these pieces where the truth of the autobiography resides, for effectively underscore Gunn’s observation that “the this truth, as Janet Varner Gunn has said, lies “not in authorship of autobiography is tacitly plural” (143). the ‘facts’ of the story itself, but in the relational After all, autobiography, as Gunn notes, is a per- space between the story and its reader” (143). These formance, a game—a social act that calls for a “plu- cartoonists exploit that metaphoric space, inviting ral, not singular, reflexivity” (140). Clowes, Crumb, readers into complicity. and Hernandez invite us to play this game: our input If autobiographical comics offer a specious objec- is solicited, and our skepticism flattered, by their tivity, then Crumb, Clowes, and Hernandez take pains refusal to be simply “honest”—that is, fictitious. to subvert it. Yet paradoxically this subversion cements We might call this strategy, then, authentication the pact, the generic understanding, between read- through artifice, or more simply ironic authentication: ers and author, for these comics attempt to avoid the implicit reinforcement of truth claims through falsification by acknowledging the reader’s presence their explicit rejection. In brief, ironic authentication

125 THE PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS makes a show of honesty by denying the very possi- with his failed attempts to assert his individuality in bility of being honest. The strategy reaches its zenith the face of multiple selves. “A Marriage Album,” a of playful aggression in the above three tales, which, collaborative tale in which Pekar and his wife, Joyce paradoxically, glorify the self through a form of self- Brabner (with illustrator Val Mayerick) recall the cir- abnegation—that is, through the very denial of an cumstances of their marriage, takes an opposite tack: irreducible, unified identity, one that cannot be falsi- it shows different and conflicting pictures of Harvey, fied through artistic representation. In each case the culled from past American Splendor stories, to sug- self-assertion of the author rests on the plasticity of gest how Joyce’s image of him was influenced by his his self-image, on his awareness of the slipperiness comics prior to their first face-to-face meeting (fig. 49). of individual identity. The core identity of each is This highly fraught moment, as Witek suggests in precisely what cannot be represented, and it is this Comic Books as History, calls attention not only to very lack that, ironically, prompts the project of self- the diverse styles of Pekar’s collaborators but also to representation. “the various fictionalizing personae Pekar [has] If this constitutive absence underlies autobiogra- adopt[ed],” hence to the inherently fictive nature of phy in general, it becomes especially clear in the form his autobiographical work (139). As in Our Cancer of comics, where a series of discrete images, each one Year, so here: art filters into life, alerting us to our substituting for the one before it, represents sequence own participation in the author’s self-construction. and continuity. The syntax of comics—specifically, its In conclusion, despite the seeming naïveté of reliance on visual substitution to suggest continu- autobiographical comics in general, such ironic ity—puts the lie to the notion of an unchanging, authentication informs many of the keystone works undivided self, for in the breakdowns of comics we in the genre. Moments of self-referential play can be see the self (in action over a span of time) repre- found, for instance, in such seminal examples as sented by multiple selves. The tension between sin- Green’s Binky Brown (to which we turn in our next gle image and image-in-series disrupts (in the words chapter) and Kominsky-Crumb’s early “Bunch” sto- of Linda Haverty Rugg) “the singularity of the auto- ries. Though Crumb, Clowes, and Hernandez take biographical pact by pointing to a plurality of selves” this strategy to a skeptical and disorienting extreme, (13). The representation of time through space, and such self-reflexive gestures are to some degree essen- the fragmentation of space into contiguous images, tial to the genre. Granted, some cartoonists gleefully argue for the changeability of the individual self—the blur the distinction between auteur and cartoon possibility that our identities may be more change- persona: take for example Crumb and Kominsky- able, or less stable, than we care to imagine. The Crumb in Dirty Laundry and Self-Loathing Comics three stories above flirt with this unsettling possibil- (husband-and-wife collaborations in which each car- ity, and testify to anxiety about it, yet each attempts toonist draws him/herself), or the remarkably indis- to celebrate, through ironic refraction, the “auteur” creet Joe Matt (whose Peepshow often serves as a behind the curtain, the cartoonist whose craft makes passive-aggressive intervention in his own real-life these multiple representations possible. relationships). Ironic authentication, however, calls Once established, the idea of ironic authentication attention to this very distinction, life vs. art, and thus sheds light on the representational strategies behind answers the justified skepticism of readers. In short, autobiographical comics in general. Indeed this self- this strategy continually renegotiates the compact reflexive dimension can be seen even in comics by between author and audience, certifying the genre’s Harvey Pekar. For instance, “The Harvey Pekar Name truth claims through unabashed falseness. Story,” as shown in chapter 2, puts paid to the notion It may be that ironic authentication simply exag- of a singular self, through its ironic use of a grid filled gerates the irony inherent in trying to tell one’s own with near-identical “Pekars” (refer back to fig. 11). story through the hybrid visual-verbal means of The frustration of the narrator has everything to do comics. Comic art, after all, is a potentially complex

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Figure 49. Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner, and Val Mayerick, “A Marriage Album.” More American Splendor (n. pag.). © Harvey Pekar. Used with permission. narrative instrument, offering forms of visual-verbal which enables the author to represent simultane- synergy in which confused and even conflicting points ously various aspects or readings of him or herself. of view can be entertained all at once. The interaction Ironic authentication points up this complexity, both of word and picture—that basic tension between challenging and yet affirming autobiography’s regard codes—allows for ongoing intertextual or metatextual for truth. The above examples represent a salutary commentary, a possibility that threatens the very loss of innocence—the recognition that, for auto- idea of a unified self. Complex, multivalent mean- biographers, “truth” must be a matter of craft as ings, irreducible to a single message, are possible in well as honesty. comics precisely because of this visual-verbal tension,

127 CHAPTERCHAPTER FIVE 1

IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

TWO CASE STUDIES

Regarding autobiographical comics, hindsight reveals an ironic, self-reflexive impulse at work in many of the genre’s urtexts. The ironies may not always be as bald, or as cynical, as in the key instances from our previous chapter, but nonetheless they are crucial, often contributing to a sense of distance between the “naïve” self depicted in the autobiography and the older, more sophisticated self responsible for the depiction. This distancing is critical in two senses, that is, both analytical and all-important. As Louis Renza long ago observed, the autobiographer experiences his “signified past self as at once the same as his present self . . . and yet strangely, uniquely, as other to it” (317). The worldview of the autobiographical subject, often a confused young naïf, contrasts with the more mature and comprehensive, or simply more jaded, view of the author. In comics, this sense of otherness may be enacted by the tension between representational codes: the abstract or discursive (the Word) versus the concrete or visual (the Picture). Such verbal- visual tension opens up a space of opportunity, one in which pictorial metaphors can multiply promiscuously, offering a surreal or wildly subjective vision to counterbalance the truth claims that certify the text as autobiographical. Thus bizarre, “unrealistic,” and expressionistic images may coexist with a scrupulously factual account of one’s life. The resultant ironies confer an authenticity that is emotional rather than literal: that of the present talking to the past. But why does the “authenticity” of autobiographical comics matter, anyway? To be frank, the very idea of authenticity (or its pejorative flipside,

128 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS inauthenticity) carries a moralistic and metaphysical the horizons of Lasch’s larger critique, Gordon would charge that should rouse our skepticism. As our pre- seem to score a palpable hit (the historical near- vious chapter reveals, talking about “authenticity” in coincidence of Lasch’s book and Pekar’s American nonfiction comics is dicey at best—the sort of thing Splendor perhaps helps). that invites anxious throat-clearing and the fretful Indeed Lasch, in his attack on New Journalism overuse of quotation marks. Yet, as before noted, and the self-help and confessional literature of the the ethic of “authenticity” (there I go again) stands seventies, seems to anticipate some commonplace in polemical contrast to the fantasy genres that criticisms of autobiographical comics. He criticizes have for so long dominated the comics mainstream. “the confessional mode” for presenting personal Invoking “authenticity” means taking a stand—this experience without reflection, in “undigested” form, is one of the fundamental appeals of alternative and also for appealing to “salacious curiosity” rather comics—and autobiographical comics that strive than the search for deep understanding. Perhaps after authenticity have the potential for radical cul- most damning, Lasch faults such writing for failing tural argument. Again, there is a democratic subtext to achieve “the detachment indispensable to art” to the genre and at its best an awareness of the link- (17). His criticism extends to specific elements, or ing, indeed inextricable knotting, of the personal tics, of style, such as “self-parody”—more specifi- and the political. Simply put, the idea of authenticity cally, that “perfunctory [and] self-deprecatory” strain offers an escape from escapism (in the narrowest, of humor that disarms criticism by offering writers a most retrograde sense). convenient way out, a means of “disclaiming respon- Some will argue, indeed some have argued, oth- sibility” and “ingratiating themselves” to the skepti- erwise. For instance, cultural historian Ian Gordon, cal reader (18–19). This charge seems born out by, reviewing Joseph Witek’s Comic Books as History, for example, the aforementioned “Many Faces of balks at Witek’s appraisal of Harvey Pekar. Gordon R. Crumb,” in which disquieting self-revelation eases suggests that Pekar’s work, far from linking the per- immediately into self-deprecating overstatement sonal and the political, remains “banal [and] narcis- (see chapter 4). As Lasch sees it, this type of work, sistic,” and charges Pekar with an “inability to far from being honest, is fundamentally “evasive,” conceive of human relations except as they apply to as it “waives the right to be taken seriously” and himself” (“‘But Seriously, Folks . . . ’” 345). For seems determined merely to attract undeserved atten- Gordon, Pekar’s self-regarding comics, and the tion or sympathy (20–21). reception of same, are symptoms of “a culture of Such charges are hard to answer, not least because narcissism.” This accusation alludes, of course, to they blur together aesthetic and moralistic judg- Christopher Lasch’s famed The Culture of Narcissism ments under the warrant of psychoanalysis, with its (1978), an Olympian analysis undergirded by Freud authoritative, clinical vocabulary. Lasch’s study is and distinguished by a broad and penetrating cri- sweeping; his argument extends from the clinical lit- tique of various media and cultural forms. By now erature regarding narcissism (Freud, Kernberg, Klein Lasch’s indictment has a familiar ring to it: the post- et al.) to an omnivorous critique of various cultural sixties retreat into privatism, as opposed to political forms and institutions, and, ultimately, to an attack action; the rise of a “therapeutic sensibility” that on post-industrial capitalism, which, he argues, centers everything on the self; the relentless trum- “elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone” peting of personal gratification, at the expense of (232). In this light, the upwelling of new forms of enduring social relations; the neglect of historical personal narrative (in comics and in literature more continuity—indeed the whole depressing parade of generally) appears merely a symptom of collapse, or the so-called “Me Generation,” of which Lasch pro- retreat, into a pathological me-first-ism that logically vided the most magisterial and perhaps most radical fulfills rather than resists the cultural crisis of late critique. By positioning his reading of Pekar within capitalism.

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This far-ranging analysis has implications for what storytelling device, a means for getting at, and shap- we now habitually call postmodern culture, espe- ing, the stories of other people’s lives. cially as Lasch touches on such topics as historical Joseph Witek long ago observed this tendency in amnesia, the ubiquity of advertising, and the idea of Pekar’s work (Comic Books 142–43, 149–53). In the “consumption as an alternative to protest or rebel- years since Witek’s study, Pekar (perhaps partly lion” (73). In the latter we should include the mar- because of the influence of his wife, writer Joyce keting and consumption of “rebellion” itself, as an Brabner) has become even more interested in using idea, a stance, even a “style.” Indeed advertising his life experience as a way of bringing others’ to light. now routinely exhorts us to “think differently” and The intersubjective, indeed collaborative, potential of offers, as incentive, images of culture heroes who Pekar comes to the fore in many of his projects. Take, became such by virtue of their supposed individual- for instance, the shared memoir Our Cancer Year, ism. From this viewpoint, autobiography’s “assertion with Brabner and illustrator Frank Stack, in which the of individuality” (established in our last chapter) interplay between Pekar’s and Brabner’s viewpoints could be construed not as a principled resistance to parallels the interweaving of personal and political corporate culture but rather as a form of surrender. crises (as described in the previous chapter); the one- Individualists, rebels, and “hipsters,” in particular the shot comic book American Splendour [sic]: heroes of the sixties’ “anticommercial” countercul- Transatlantic Comics (1998), based on British artist ture, are the pillars of today’s commercial hype. Indeed, Colin Warneford’s personal account of living with as Thomas Frank points out in The Conquest of Cool Asperger’s Syndrome, and illustrated mostly by (1997), the counterculture has become “an enduring Warneford himself from Pekar’s script; and the recent commercial myth,” and “hip” a ubiquitous commercial Unsung Hero (2003), a retelling of the Vietnam expe- style, indeed “the vernacular of the [1990s’] much- riences of African-American war veteran Robert hyped economic revolution” (32). By this light, resist- McNeill, drawn by David Collier from Pekar’s script, ing a too-obvious commercialization, as indeed Pekar’s and evidently based on McNeill’s own oral testimony. American Splendor and many other autobiographical These long-form projects only enlarge on a ten- comics do, is but another form of commercial come- dency apparent in Pekar’s work from early on, for, as on. Everybody wants to be an individual, everybody often as Pekar has made himself and his struggles wants to “fight the power.” What makes autobio- the center of attention, he has also turned his observ- graphical comics so special in this regard? ing eye on others and solicited their stories. The Such a view apparently underlies Gordon’s indict- near-constant presence of Pekar himself, as inter- ment of Pekar, a writer for whom, he says, “other locutor and recorder, serves not as a mere salve to people’s experiences only achieve importance as the author’s ego but rather as an authenticating they relate to [himself]” (345). Lost in this criticism, device (rather like the foregrounding of the writer’s however, are two considerations. First, autobiogra- experience in the New Journalism). At times this phy, with its focus on the everyday, has the potential interchange results in a complex tracing of connec- to shed light on issues of real political and cultural tions between the author’s personal activity and his heft; as Lasch says, “social questions inevitably pres- gathering of other people’s tales. This technique, ent themselves also as personal ones” (26). Second, modeled by Pekar, has since shaped many autobio- autobiography is not always and inevitably a genre graphical and journalistic comics, such as, for exam- for the self-absorbed, or the strutting “individualist.” ple, the eccentric historical comics of David Collier On the contrary, much autobiography derives its (Just the Facts, Portraits from Life) and the emotion- interest from its enactment of dialogical and inter- ally wrenching reportage of Joe Sacco (Palestine, subjective relationships—in short, from its social acu- Safe Area Gorazˇde)—both sometime Pekar collabo- ity. Autobiographical comics in particular often treat rators. In the best of such comics, autobiographical the author’s visible persona as an interlocutor and self-reflexivity serves to pry open larger political and

130 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS cultural issues; ironic authentication, as defined in Virgin Mary (1972). Binky, published by the pio- our last chapter, enables the careful and complex neering underground comix company Last Gasp handling of a larger social/historical focus. Eco-Funnies (of Berkeley, California), is recognized In chapter 4 we established ironic authentication as a precursor to Pekar; indeed it is often cited as the as a tempting strategy in nonfiction comics, a means wellspring of autobiographical comics. Estren’s History of graphically asserting truthfulness through the of Underground Comics, for example, argues for admission of artifice. Thus defined, ironic authenti- Binky’s wide influence and praises its unparalleled cation gives authors a way of anticipating, answer- mix of “social commentary, social satire, and social ing, and taking advantage of their own (and their realism” (289–91). Rosenkranz’s Rebel Visions (quot- readers’) skepticism. By way of conclusion I sug- ing Green) alludes to the passionate reader response gested that this kind of irony only exaggerates the the book engendered (189); more concretely, The ironies always potentially present in comics, due to Comics Journal’s Bob Levin observes that Binky sold the form’s fundamental tension between verbal and some 50,000 copies, an extraordinary figure for comix visual codes. This tension enables the graphic enact- (101). Most famously, Binky inspired the seminal ment, on the picture plane, of the critical estrange- first-person comics of Crumb, Kominsky-Crumb, and ment or distancing between the autobiographer and many others (Spiegelman, “Symptoms” 4). his/her “past self” (as depicted in the work). Such Green’s groundbreaking work warrants a close irony may confer emotional truths while confound- look because it at once anticipates, and stands in ing any literal sense of authenticity. Broadly speak- sharp contrast to, the insistently mundane and more ing, ironic authentication makes the autobiographical or less “realistically” rendered comics of the Pekar comic reenact or “speak to” its own making. school. (Binky foreshadows, for example, Gilbert This kind of irony, then, allows for not only vari- Hernandez’s protean, wildly shifting approach to ous playful metacomics—comics about making comics autobiography, seen in our previous chapter.) More about making comics, ad infinitum, as in our previous important, Binky is an extraordinary achievement in examples from Crumb, Clowes, and Hernandez—but its own right: a fantastic, bleakly humorous mix of also comics about subjects that are almost impossi- informed anti-Catholic polemic and self-scourging bly hard to handle, where questions of truth and confessional. Over its forty pages, Green uncorks his artifice are fraught with special urgency, both psy- psyche, examining in harrowing detail the collision chologically and politically. The balance of this chap- of Catholic doctrine and his own neurotic, guilt-driven ter will examine two autobiographical comics of the personality (since diagnosed as a case of Obsessive- utmost urgency, to show how self-reflexivity can Compulsive Disorder, though no such explanation enable both psychological intimacy and bold social was available to Green at the time of Binky’s cre- argument. I hope what follows will also suggest why ation [Green 8]). The book depicts the mutual rein- autobiography, of all things, became central to alter- forcement of religious dogma and psychological native comics—and indeed became comic art’s most obsession, a cruel synergy that all but consumes its traveled route to growth, enrichment, and recogni- titular hero. Binky, a profoundly restless character, is tion as a form of literature. tormented by self-doubt, thus devoted to constant checking, double-checking, and triple-checking to make sure no sins are committed (or at least none JUSTIN GREEN: HONESTY THROUGH left unatoned). The book, in keeping with this psy- METAPHORICAL OVERKILL chological profile, is a work of obsessive genius. Green’s particular obsession, as detailed in Binky, The first of our examples, perhaps the ur-example of involves imaginary rays of carnal lust emanating from confessional literature in comics, is Justin Green’s his penis, his limbs, and even material objects, rays one-shot comic book Binky Brown Meets the Holy that he must prevent from striking representations,

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Figure 50. Justin Green, “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary.” Binky Brown Sampler 42 (excerpt). © Justin Green. Used with permission. whether visual or verbal, of the Holy Virgin Mary (and pattern on the classroom floor, and shows one of the Catholic Church more generally). These rays Binky’s teachers, a severe nun, ordering her charges threaten to converge on the Virgin in much the same to “line up [their] desks with the tiles!” The panel way that, in classical perspective, invisible lines con- before this shows a nun beating Binky with a “metal nect parallel objects to a common vanishing point—a architect’s ruler” (18). Later, as the comic explains resemblance that Green, an almost neurotically metic- Binky’s obsession for “straightening” things, the draw- ulous craftsman, duly acknowledges. Indeed, the ings parody his obsession, turning the character and exact form of Green’s compulsion seems to match his environment into flat, angular shapes in contrast perfectly his vocation as artist: his cartoon alter ego, to the freehand energy of Green’s usual figures (fig. Binky Brown, visualizes a world of gridlike precision, in 50). Binky himself, walking past a chair that offends which invisible vectors of sin crisscross the landscape. his sense of order, becomes a parody of Superman’s This, obviously, is an artist’s conceit. once-popular character “Bizarro” (a square-headed, Binky’s obsession requires positioning himself crystalline version of Superman who lived on a cube- within the discipline of classical perspective—a curi- shaped world and spoke in a fractured, childlike ously rectilinear worldview for one consumed by dialect). In Bizarro-speak, Binky says, “Uh-oh—chair guilt and fear. Green at once underscores and resists make trouble!” He then straightens the offending this linearity, for graphically his artwork enacts a furniture so that “all is well” (42). struggle between geometric severity and organic On the facing page, an assortment of penile fluidity. For instance, as he describes his Catholic objects (weathercock, badminton racket, soda bottle, school’s insistence on “order, uniformity, rigidity, and and so on) appears in a baffling, non-perspectival obedience,” Green draws a precise square-tiled splash panel that takes up two-thirds of the page,

132 Figure 51. Green, “Binky Brown.” 43. © Justin Green. Used with permission. 133 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS each object projecting its “pecker ray” (fig. 51). These hangs upside down with a pen in his mouth, draw- tumescent shapes, veined and fleshy, recall the ing a comics page (10). His ink bottle is labeled curvy, LSD-influenced abstractions of such under- “Dad’s blood”; a phonograph beside him plays a ground comix artists as Victor Moscoso, and their warped record of “Ave Maria.” He draws by candle- resistance to conventional perspective belies Binky’s light, while cherubim hover overhead, with plunger, efforts (and the Church’s) to “mold the unwieldy toilet paper, and toilet bowl brush in their hands. living world into a ‘safe’ mechanical scheme” (43). Just Positioned between the artist’s legs is a long, sickle- beneath, a round or “bull’s-eye” panel contains an like blade, perched dangerously close to his groin. explanation of Binky’s perspectival obsession, replete Here Green, in a “confession to [his] readers,” with a diagram of “projection rays” and “vanishing admits that Binky represents an effort to, as he says, point.” At the bottom of the page, Binky, shown “purge myself of the compulsive neurosis which I struggling with a giant toothpaste tube to prevent its have served since I officially left Catholicism on ray from striking “you-know-who,” again appears in Halloween, 1958.” Begging indulgence for focusing an oddly angular rendering, as if his body was made on “the petty conflict in [his] crotch,” the cartoonist of sheared quartz. suggests that portraying his neurosis in “easy-to- Such self-reflexive playfulness characterizes Binky understand comic-book format” may help others right up to the end, as Green nods repeatedly to the similarly afflicted, and thus constitutes an act of very act of drawing. The creation of Binky itself is intervention in a “social” issue: “If we neurotics drawn into the story, as a sign of Green’s despera- were tied together we would entwine the globe many tion, a purging of his guilt, and a way of humorously times over in a vast chain of common suffering” underscoring his critique of Catholicism. For example, (10, emphasis in original). The very balloon that the penultimate panel finds Binky, having spurned contains his words appears bloated and venous, Catholicism and recognized his obsession as such, wrapped in thorns and held to the wall by an enor- eyeing a stack of overdue library books: First Cat- mous nail, a Christological allusion that suggests echism, Perspective, and Fun with a Pencil (fig. 52). both the depth of Green’s impiety and the despera- The titles of these three books testify to the overlap tion of his cause. From the outset, then, the pen in Brown/Green’s psyche between artistic vision and becomes both an affront to Catholicism and an religious neurosis, as they recall the hero’s indoctri- active substitute for or sublimation of an endan- nation into the Church, his grasp of classical art, and gered sexuality, the mobile alternative to a penis his dedication to drawing. In the background, a held motionless, hostage, by a symbolic threat of cartoon by R. Crumb hints at a different source of castration. A reference in the indicia below to the inspiration: metonymically, Crumb (also a lapsed Catholic Guild’s comic book series Treasure Chest Catholic) stands in for the underground comix (1946–72) cements the link between Green and the movement, then in its heyday, which liberated Green Catholic tradition, even as it announces the “adults- artistically, inspiring him to set forth his personal only” nature of this comic (“Youngsters Prohibited,” story in comics form. as the front cover proclaims). Obviously, the “pencil” in the third book’s title, This illustration is the first of many extravagant Fun with a Pencil, can substitute metaphorically for visual metaphors employed by Green to illustrate the feared penis, the original source of the rays that and intensify his autobiographical polemic. These have so monopolized Binky’s imagination. Green metaphors, as Joseph Witek suggests, give Binky a knowingly employs this metaphoric likeness between surreal, wildly comic quality that sets it apart from artist’s tool and penis, beginning with the fron- Pekar’s later, more naturalistic efforts (Comic Books tispiece (inside front cover) to the comic book (fig. 128). Most notably, Green himself becomes a recur- 53). Here, in a full-page drawing, a caricature of rent metaphor: the image of the artist with pen in Green appears: naked, hands and ankles bound, he mouth reappears three times in the tale itself. First,

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within the page, the ink defacing the drawing even as Binky, in the comic within the comic, struggles to overcome his guilt complex. Barely comprehensible, the cartoonist blurts between clenched teeth, “Shek-ik! Almesh fineshk!” This weird interpolation (almost finished?) suggests that, for the cartoonist, the creation of Binky itself has become an elaborate act of penance. It seems that, despite Binky’s climactic self-transformation, Green remains entangled in the guilty compulsions of former days, and the crafting of Binky itself represents yet another ritual “purging” of these feelings (as the frontispiece suggests). Indeed, the final panel undercuts Binky’s victory over Catholic guilt, as it reimagines the cartoonist as a (phallic) fish, lurching down the sidewalk, pen in his mouth. As a cop wearing the sign of the Cross follows, waving a fish- net, the captioned text parodies accounts of evolution, with references to Binky creeping out of “the primeval morass of superstition,” taking a “desperate” leap such as those taken by “our brave ancestors, the fish.” This ambivalent, comically reductive Figure 52. Green, “Binky Brown.” 50 (excerpt). © Justin Green. Used ending testifies to the tenacity of his neurosis and with permission. the impossibility of simply purging it through a violent catharsis (as Binky attempts to do at the climax, Green uses this image to smooth over a transition by literal iconoclasm, that is, by smashing mass- between his years in parochial school and his arrival produced Virgins with a hammer). The very process at “a 90% Jewish public school” (29). More specifi- of creating Binky, then, becomes a crucial part of cally, he deploys this self-caricature to redirect the Green’s tale of obsession: and this is the vanishing reader from a polemic on Catholic doctrine back to point where Green becomes Binky Brown, Binky his life story per se. Second, the bound cartoonist’s becomes Justin Green. likeness pops up as Green explains the impossibility Thus Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary of keeping pace with his “daily prayer quota,” that is itself a purgative ritual (comparable to Binky’s is, his laundry list of penances (44). As “snowballing final confrontation with the mass-produced 39-cent guilt” transforms Binky into a literal snowball (or Madonnas). The pen, one phallic item not explicitly Sisyphean boulder?), rolling downhill from Purgatory identified with the penis (though Fun with a Pencil to Hell, the image from the frontispiece appears in a hints at this possibility), becomes a more potent tiny inset panel, as if the cartoonist were speaking symbol than the hammer seen at story’s end or the directly to us. various other shaftlike instruments invoked through- Finally, the story’s last page recalls the frontispiece out (baseball bat, fire hose, and so on, all associ- again (50). Here the second panel abruptly pulls us ated with the feared “pecker rays”). The comic, out of the story itself, recontextualizing Binky (tri- which begins with young Binky’s accidental shatter- umphant in his rejection of guilt) as a mere drawing ing of a Madonna statue, becomes in the end the on paper (fig. 54). We see the pen, gripped between supreme gesture of iconoclasm, hinted at by the the artist’s teeth, blotting and scratching on the page back cover, which shows a lion, wearing a “B” for

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“Binky,” attacking the Virgin and revealing her to be To this end—and here is what makes Binky a devil in saint’s clothing (52). Brown such a bold and effective piece of work— Years later, Green would admit that, at the time Green deploys an array of extravagant visual of Binky, he styled himself “a warrior against the metaphors. Though he lovingly captures the cultural Church” (8). Notwithstanding his subsequent retreat landscape of his formative years in the fifties (for from this uncompromising position, Binky shows the example, clothing, comics, and Cadillacs; furniture, ferocity of his rejection quite clearly, as Binky decries TV, and rock ‘n’ roll), Green also takes flight graphi- “that mean ol’ nasty, whining Catholic God who cally through a series of disorienting conceits that demands all our love, all the time . . . an unattainable capture young Binky’s psychic landscape with equal ideal!” (48). Yet Green’s polemic admits of ambigu- precision. At first such conceits are confined to ity: for instance, one priest, “Father Innocenzi,” young Binky’s dreams and fantasies, but then they appears liberal, lenient and understanding, and tells gradually assert themselves into his daily life through Binky that “God is merciful” (34); likewise, “Sister passages of Green’s anti-Catholic argument (for Virginia,” one of the nuns at Binky’s parochial school, example, parochial school students are brainwashed is shown favorably—even though Binky himself and turned into marionettes, replete with strings). rejects her when she leaves the convent, calling her Eventually, elements of fantasy begin to intrude an excommunicant and “weakling” (18–19). The everywhere: Binky’s Jewish father, for instance, story, then, focuses less on the abuse of temporal appears as a horned devil, and a girl he idolizes liter- power by the clergy and more on the inner world of ally stands on a pedestal. At one point, rejected by the child, Binky; less on the bare facts of Green’s this girl, Binky literally falls down in “th’ dumps,” upbringing, more on the development of his tor- then extricates himself with pious reminders of Christ’s tured self-image vis-à-vis the Church and especially suffering (fig. 55). In this sequence, the weight of the Virgin. Church dogma appears as a monkey on Binky’s back,

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bearing a Cross of its own, while a “Sinstopper’s densely crosshatched backgrounds, some approach- Guidebook” (cribbed from the “Crimestopper’s Text- ing an engraving-like texture. Throughout, voluptuous book” in Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy) counsels against curves battle with rigid, carefully ruled edges, as if the sin of despair (26–27). enacting the artist’s own struggle between icono- These visual metaphors come more often as Binky’s clasm and guilt. Those expecting a documentary psychic world becomes more and more dominated by realism, to authenticate Green’s polemic, will be per- his guilty obsessions. Finally, this movement toward plexed by his anarchic visual imagination and over- metaphor climaxes in the discovery of the “pecker flowing technique. rays,” which turn every extremity of Binky’s body While Green does not worry the problem of into a penile projector (42). Over and over, hands authenticity per se, he uses myriad devices that put and feet appear as huge penises. Consensus reality paid to the idea of an unproblematic objectivity: vanishes for whole sequences as, for example, Binky visual symbolism, verbal and ideographic commen- tries to plug the holes in his “psychic dam” (made tary, parody and ever-changing graphic design. Thus literal in the drawings) or assumes the angular, Bizarro- Binky, inspiration for the autobiographical comix like countenance described above. Most important are movement to follow, demonstrates how the persona the changes in Binky himself, some subtle, some not: of the cartoonist is always inevitably in doubt—how he ages; his nose grows; his physique alternates a mocking visual self-reflexivity informs even the between anemic stringiness and well-muscled beef- foundations of this genre. Indeed, radical subjectivity cake (50). In addition, Green employs a huge arsenal is the focus of Binky, and Green’s cartoon world is as of layout strategies, graphic devices, and delineative aggressively imaginative as Binky’s own inner world variations: panels and panel borders change shape; is obsessive and guilt-wracked. diagrammatic arrows, thought balloons, signs and Green’s blending of scarifying psychological con- mock-scholarly documentation run rampant; wide- tent and profuse visual metaphor has been an open, white panels contrast with zipatone grays and important reference point for several generations of

138 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS cartoonists. In particular, he anticipated a school of example, cats against mice). Thus Spiegelman runs visionary autobiography that has recently reappeared the risk of mystifying the historical bases of European on the alternative comics scene with terrific force: anti-Semitism and German imperialism. Robert C. Take for example French artist David B.’s six-volume Harvey presses this point in The Art of the Comic family memoir L’Ascension du Haut Mal (1996–2003, Book: Spiegelman’s animal metaphor, he argues, translated into English as Epileptic, 2005), with its “plays directly into [Nazism’s] racist vision” (244). long historical reach and beautiful, fierce, dreamlike The device, he maintains, “threatens to erode [the imagery; or, for a strikingly different example, Madison story’s] moral underpinnings” (243). Harvey’s criti- Clell’s Cuckoo (2002), a rough-hewn, graphically cism underscores the risk inherent in the book’s fragmented yet wholly persuasive account of living strategy: the predatory cats of Spiegelman’s vision with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Such work has may perhaps be seen as simply fulfilling their natural helped widen the prevailing sense of what comics roles as predators; worse yet, the persecution and can do, and it is the possibility of such work that extermination of the Jews may be written off as a makes the autobiographical comics genre so urgent. simple consequence of their own “natural,” mouselike timidity. Yet, paradoxically, Spiegelman’s visual metaphor MAUS AND WHAT CANNOT BE REPRESENTED succeeds by self-destructing and thus undercutting such essentialist readings. The text takes pains to call Yet arguably the most urgent and complex of auto- attention to the inadequacy of the metaphor, over biographical comics, and certainly the best known and over, as if to expose Spiegelman’s artifice for among American readers, is Art Spiegelman’s cele- what it is. The fallacy of representing cultural differ- brated Maus (two volumes: 1 in 1986, 2 in 1991). In ences by outward traits (for example, Jewishness Maus, ironic authentication appears at its knottiest through mouseness) is repeatedly thrust in the and most politically fraught, as Spiegelman puts reader’s face as a problem. For instance, Polish Jews claims to truth under the greatest pressure. Admit- repeatedly pass themselves off as gentiles by wear- tedly inspired by the urgency of Binky Brown, Maus ing pig masks in the drawings, though in fact they nonetheless avoids Green’s relentlessly allegorical are not so much pretending to be something as pre- and parodic iconolatry; it also skirts the corrosive tending not to be something. Spiegelman himself cynicism we have seen in Crumb, Clowes, and appears as a mouse, as a man, and as a man in a Hernandez. Despite this, Maus represents the ne plus mouse mask. Meanwhile “real” animals, such as ultra of self-reflexive irony in comics. Spiegelman’s horses, police dogs, and cellar-dwelling rats, exist intergenerational memoir of the Jewish Holocaust side by side with the artist’s metaphorical ones. and its psychological fallout serves not only as a his- Photos of human beings appear as well, further dis- tory, a biography of the author’s father (Vladek mantling the metaphor. Moreover, the words never Spiegelman), and an autobiography but also as an once refer to Spiegelman’s cast of characters as any- extended essay on the pitfalls of trying to represent thing but human; thus the animal metaphor impacts the unrepresentable. the visual but not the written text, an inconsistency This self-critical aspect comes into focus through Spiegelman knowingly courted when creating the the story’s notorious gimmick, the representation of book (Groth and Fiore 191). human beings through anthropomorphic animals: In this light, one could be forgiven for asking, Jews as mice, German gentiles as cats, Polish gentiles “Why bother to use the animal metaphor at all?” as pigs, and so on. This gimmick, as others have Indeed, some have roundly criticized Spiegelman’s remarked, toys with biological determinism by use of the device as glib and irresponsible. Hillel metaphorically turning ethnic and nationalistic con- Halkin, reviewing Maus for Commentary in 1992, flicts into natural predator/prey relationships (for argues, “The Holocaust was a crime committed by

139 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS humans against humans, not—as Nazi theory held— to the story’s understated drama)1 often revolve by one biological species against another.... To around the failure of the animal metaphor. For draw people as animals . . . is doubly dehumanizing, instance, at one point Vladek worries about his wife, once by virtue of the symbolism and once by virtue Anja (Art’s mother), whose more obviously “Jewish” of graphic limitations” (56). Halkin’s objections appearance may handicap their efforts to escape the assume a literal reading of the character’s animal Nazis. The drawings show both husband and wife in faces, but in fact the animal metaphor is just that: a pig masks but only Anja sports a long, ropy, mouse- metaphor, a sign rather than a literal representation. like tail (1:136). Later, in volume 2, the guilt-ridden The animal-like depictions of people are not repre- Spiegelman appears at his drawing board, his sentational in any conventional sense. As Adam mouselike face a mask held on by string, as he dis- Gopnik puts it, “Maus is in no way an animal cusses the critical reception of volume 1. Thus Spiegel- fable. . . . The Jews are Jews who just happen to be man seeks immediacy through tortuous complexity. depicted as mice” (31). Maus’s animal metaphor authenticates Spiegelman’s In fact Spiegelman deliberately exploits the account of the Holocaust by calling attention to its “graphic limitations” of his style to force us to look own artificiality. The effect is of innocence lost, yet beyond the device. His mouse-characters boast only reinvoked through the archest of ironies. the most rudimentary vocabulary of facial expres- Spiegelman practices ironic authentication not sions; their emotions are cartooned with a broad, only by short-circuiting the animal metaphor but brusquely rendered but telling simplicity (for exam- also by continually juxtaposing past and present. As ple, eyeballs empty white or solid black; brows many critics (for example, Witek, Joshua Brown, straight or arched). One doesn’t so much look at the Michael Staub) have observed, Maus points to the characters’ faces as through them. Indeed, this is one circumstances of its own making, calling attention to of Harvey’s objections to the device: the characters’ the way Spiegelman’s relationships with his father “mouseness,” he argues, does not contribute to the and mother urged on and influenced his work. story (Comic Book 245). It appears, then, that Harvey’s Revealing ironies emerge as the book tries to bridge critique of Maus rests on a paradox: Spiegelman flirts the generations: Maus shows the inescapable fall- with a dangerous essentialism, yet, in the end, his out of Nazi genocide as a long shadow cast over use of metaphor is not essentialist enough, literal survivors, survivors’ children, and the generations to enough, to exploit the qualities of the animals invoked. come. The Spiegelman-protagonist, Art, relives aspects What Harvey neglects is the very anti-essentialist of the Holocaust through his recollections, withhold- nature of Spiegelman’s project. ings, and nightmares, in particular through inter- Maus’s drawings succeed by indirection. By defa- views with his father Vladek, whose story Maus miliarizing the already familiar details of the becomes. Thus Art recreates the Holocaust in the Holocaust, Spiegelman’s “funny animal” drawings present, not as the vague, implicit understanding he reacquaint us with the horrors of genocide in the once had, but as a specific, vividly imagined series of most offhand and intimate of ways. As Witek points events. These events, conjured from Art’s collabora- out, this technique enables Maus to avoid the tion with Vladek, help to rationalize the cultural dis- “overdetermination of meaning”—the “already told,” placement of his parents as survivors, as well as his prepackaged and numbing pieties—associated with own personal anomie as a survivor’s son. To justify the subject (Comic Books 102–3). If the metaphor this therapeutic work, Spiegelman grounds the story works, it works by unraveling itself in sheer horror. in the particulars of family life, repeatedly reminding The value of Spiegelman’s method lies in our recog- the reader that this is but one partial, inevitably dis- nition of its inadequacy. torted account of the Holocaust, contingent on his In Maus, moments of formalist play (characteristic tangled relationships and colored especially by his of Spiegelman’s early work, but here subordinated ambivalence toward his father.

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This narrative strategy is dangerously self- aspect of Maus works to ratify the text as a historical involved, and some readers have balked at it. For account. The story’s focus on its own making goes example, Harvey has faulted Maus for being prima- hand in hand with Spiegelman’s scrupulousness as rily about the blinding self-regard of a young artist, historian, reminding us that, in Joshua Brown’s that is, Spiegelman himself: “[W]hat Spiegelman terms, remembering and setting down such a story is ultimately shows us . . . is not the relationship not a matter of recovering bald facts but “a constitu- between son and father but the relationship between tive process, . . . a construction of the past” (95). If artist and subject. . . . [Maus] is not so much about the past—a reality “worse than my darkest dreams,” the experience of the Auschwitz survivor as it is as Art puts it—can never be quite recovered, but about the obsessions of the artistic temperament” only evoked, Spiegelman wants to make sure that (Comic Book 243). Such critiques of Maus threaten we do not miss this distinction. Maus is an evoca- to devolve into ad hominem attacks on the author, tion, not a full recovery, and its insistence on this thusly: Spiegelman is a callow, ungrateful son who very fact implicitly reinforces its trustworthiness as uses the bare-naked “honesty” of Maus both to den- an evocation. This is why past and present continu- igrate his father and to aggrandize his own efforts as ally collide, must collide, with each other in the text. an artist. (Such an argument runs through Harvey Throughout Maus, Spiegelman uses self-reflexive Pekar’s critique of Maus, source of prolonged debate devices to achieve a historian’s authority. The text’s in The Comics Journal beginning in 1986.) self-referentiality, besides justifying Maus as auto/ To be sure, Spiegelman walks a fine line, daring to biography, also undergirds Spiegelman’s sense of expose both his occasional callousness as a son and history in an immediate, practical way. Art’s desire his almost paralyzing self-consciousness as an artist. for a historian’s intimate knowledge of particulars— Yet this self-referentiality is not simply a matter of a his grasping after details in his interviews with self-involved artist kvetching about the difficulty of Vladek—explains not only the book’s diagrammatic his work. As Joshua Brown suggests, this framing emphasis on objects, settings, and processes, but of the Holocaust by Art’s own troubles serves to also the insistently ironic self-awareness of the inter- authenticate Maus as an act of historiography, for view scenes. The book is self-referential because it it interrogates the very limits of memory and story- has to be, to explain and thus justify itself as a con- telling (96). Though Maus may not be “about” any stitutive process. Rhetorically, Maus’s emphasis on one thing, it concerns, among other things, history what Art does not know (such as scenic details, both as lived experience and as a conscious Jewish liturgical tradition, or how to choose among undertaking. conflicting accounts) reinforces the image of Spiegel- Maus’s historical account, as James E. Young man as a painstaking researcher. By showing himself argues, must include the circumstances of its own finding out about these things, he authenticates his transmission, “the present circumstances under which history all the more. [it is] being remembered” (678). Art’s self-contem- Even doubts about Vladek’s account become evi- plation and Maus’s self-reflexiveness stem from the dence of Spiegelman’s scrupulousness. In one mem- impossibility of knowing the past thoroughly and orable instance, Art’s research and Vladek’s own objectively, and the resultant need to ground histori- story disagree: was there, or was there not, a camp ography in a sense of personal context. The funda- orchestra playing as prisoners were marched through mental unknowability of the Holocaust requires a the gates of Auschwitz? Vladek remembers none, but history that, as Young puts it, “makes events coherent” Art insists that “it’s very well documented” (2:54). but “gestures toward the incoherence” of experi- Oddly, the text does not show Art seeking corrobo- ence (668). Thus Harvey misrepresents Maus when ration of this ironic detail until after the first of two he claims that the work is a “portrait of the artist” panels depicting the orchestra in question. In the above all else, for the self-involved, kunstlerroman second of these panels, after Vladek has disputed

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Art’s version, the composition remains the same, “Auschwitz (Time Flies),” in which the fine points of except for a longer procession of prisoners, whose mass execution and burial are finally diagrammed in marching rows obscure the orchestra almost entirely. horrific detail. Late in the chapter the recurrent Thus, while Spiegelman upholds his own version of image of the crematorium chimney, which serves as events, his use of visual detail implies an explanation a nerve-wracking leitmotif throughout (2:51, 2:55, for Vladek’s divergent view: there were simply too 2:58), thrusts upward through a panel border, many bodies between Vladek and the orchestra for impinging on Vladek and Art’s conversation in the that detail to register. present (2:69). The chimney, the last image on the Such collisions of past and present are a constant page in question, serves as a visual reinforcement of in Maus, but take varied forms. For instance, early Vladek’s climactic utterance, “For this I was an eye- on—just two pages into Vladek’s reminiscence—Art witness”; in fact the whole page has been leading to interrupts his father, asking for clarification of a key this. Yet the chimney also reads non-linearly, for, as point: Why is Vladek telling the story of his relation- Gene Kannenberg Jr. has pointed out, it penetrates ship with a lover, Lucia, when Art had asked him to the panel above (“Form” 155). The smoke from “start with Mom,” that is, with Vladek’s courtship of Art’s own cigarette seems to waft upward from the Art’s mother, Anja? This interruption, the first of “cremo” smokestack in an obscenely droll visual joke. many in Maus, inspires a testy comeback from Indeed, throughout “Time Flies,” past and pres- Vladek: “All this was before I met Anja—just listen, ent interpenetrate in an obscenely literal way, as yes?” (1:14). As Maus progresses, these interrup- Spiegelman’s anxiety about his own limitations as tions in the flow of Vladek’s story increasingly affect historian reaches fever pitch. In this sequence, as the page layouts, as elements from the present liter- Maus delves into the details of life in Auschwitz, ally overlap elements from the past. Spiegelman suffers a profoundly debilitating case of Such overlapping is a habit of Spiegelman’s: writer’s block, as if the thought of the Nazi camps Vladek’s tale is repeatedly interrupted, punctuated, has finally disabled him. Corpses pile at the foot of and glossed in the process of its telling. Typically, his drawing table; corpses line the streets. Flies buzz these overlaps show the “present” commenting on around the rot of the bodies, and a Nazi guard tower the “past”: an inset panel may reveal Vladek’s nar- looms outside the artist’s studio (2:41–43). Art the rating presence in a particular scene (for example, character becomes “Mr. Spiegelman” here, for at 1:74), or, often, Vladek and/or Art may stand “in this point in the narrative we pull away from the front of” a panel, partially obscuring it (for example, remembrance of Vladek and Art, to a nearer “present,” 1:105, 1:115, or 2:26). In many cases Vladek and circa 1987, in which Spiegelman struggles to put his Art’s exchanges are unbound by panel borders and material in comics form. This “Spiegelman” is a man seem to crowd Vladek’s narrative. Less often, an ele- in a mouse mask, tied on with string. As in Clowes, ment from the “past” obtrudes on the “present,” Crumb, and Hernandez, so in Spiegelman: his sense violating panel borders and overlapping the image of identity is revealed as plastic, strategic, and merely of Vladek and/or Art. These moments, at which the local. His masklike “mouse” face has become just relationship between then and now is graphically that, a mask. reversed, typically signify crucial events in Vladek’s In this chapter, during an interview with his tale. For example, during Vladek and Anja’s analyst Pavel (also a survivor), Spiegelman’s mouse- courtship, she sends him a photograph of herself ness (or masked-ness) becomes radically ambiguous. (fig. 56). This photo overlaps Vladek’s image in both The close shot/reverse shot exchanges between the “present” (sitting on an exercise bike, c. 1980) Spiegelman and Pavel sometimes betray the strings and the past (Vladek framing the photo, c. 1936). tied around their heads, sometimes not (2:44–46). This graphic intrusion of the past on the present Are they men, or mouse-men? Furthermore, Spiegel- takes its most disturbing form in volume 2’s chapter, man’s stature changes throughout this sequence, as

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Figure 56. Maus 1:17 (detail). From Maus I: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman, copyright © 1986 by Art Spiegelman. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. he goes from adult to child to adult once again. By means, Spiegelman cannot adequately separate the now his self-image is in jeopardy, his sense of pur- two. At the outset, a monologue piles up details about pose and identity confused by his intimate aware- his own life and the lives of his parents and the ness of history, which bears down on him like a atrocities of Auschwitz, all thrown together without terrible weight. Yet by focusing his anxiety on the differentiation or understanding: crafting of Maus, Spiegelman seems to find a way out: the production of the text itself offers both a Vladek started working as a tinman in Auschwitz in challenge and a comfort, a way of narrowing if not the spring of 1944 . . . I started working on this page overcoming his radical sense of doubt. In short, at the very end of February 1987. Spiegelman’s struggle for historical accuracy is part In May 1987 Françoise and I are expecting a and parcel of his emotional struggle, as the work baby . . . Between May 16, 1944, and May 24, 1944 both stokes and contains his anxiety. Thus the con- over 100,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed in versation between Spiegelman and Pavel inevitably Auschwitz . . . (2:41)2 shifts from discussing his sense of emotional desola- tion (“mostly I feel like crying”) to getting scenic Though graphic juxtapositions of past and present details straight: how do you depict a tin shop in occur throughout Maus, this scene relies on a purely Auschwitz (2:46)? Spiegelman’s tortured present is verbal parataxis (literally, a placing side by side), shaped not only by history but also by historiography. unaided by visual transitions. Spiegelman’s mono- In this chapter “past” and “present” dissolve into logue here seems arbitrary, indiscriminate, and strange, each other. Faced with the enormity of what Auschwitz perhaps because it forces us to share, momentarily,

143 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS the perspective of the working artist, who constantly Such scenes throw into question the seeming has to reconcile all of these happenings in his head. verisimilitude of Maus, while at the same time The success of volume 1 of Maus (published some affirming its drive for truthfulness. Crucial to this five years prior) only cripples Spiegelman further, strategy is the way Spiegelman calls attention to his compounding his sense of guilt, as shown in a darkly various tools and sources of historical reference. For comic sequence in which reporters and hucksters vie example, Art’s use of a tape recorder becomes for the cartoonist’s attention, offering to turn Maus fraught with meaning in the last chapter of Maus, into either a cause célèbre or a cross-media merchan- which begins with him listening to a recording of his dising bonanza (2:42). father and musing, “Y’know, I’ve got over 20 hours The frantic self-referentiality of this chapter, as of Vladek’s story on tape now” (2:120). Ironically, Gene Kannenberg has persuasively argued, reflects what Vladek is telling on the tape at this moment is Spiegelman’s confused, even distraught, response to another scene previously recounted in the text: how the critical and commercial reception of Maus vol- his and Anja’s first son, Richieu, died. Richieu and his ume 1 in 1986 (“Form” 151–54). “Auschwitz (Time cousins, we know, were poisoned by Anja’s sister Flies)” shows just how painful Spiegelman’s “success” Tosha to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis, as became and betrays a desire to clear up (or attack) shown in volume 1 of Maus (1:109). Here Vladek misconceptions about Maus’s use of the animal (on tape) assumes Tosha’s part, and explains her metaphor. The chapter testifies to a crisis born of fame, decision: “No! I will not go in the gas chambers. And a reading reinforced by Spiegelman’s later comments my children will not go in the gas chambers.” He then about getting drawn into Maus’s “undertow” and continues in his own voice, saying, “So, Tosha took resenting the resultant “objectification” of his self the poison not only to herself, but to our little . . .,” (Juno 13–14). The dominant feeling here is not unlike a telling shift in emphasis that is cut off in mid- the anxious self-mockery of Crumb’s “Many Faces,” sentence by a phone call (2:121). This version of the which is likewise a response to the alienation of self event differs subtly but significantly from the version through celebrity (see our previous chapter). shown in volume 1, which stresses Tosha’s despera- Yet the self-reflexive nature of Maus goes well tion through a series of panels that zoom in on her beyond such obvious moments of crisis, for, as the face as she resolves herself to her plan (1:109). The story progresses, Spiegelman increasingly alludes to earlier version, in contrast to Vladek’s tape-recorded decisions he made while actually crafting certain testimony, puts us squarely in Tosha’s position, and moments in the text. Scenes previously recounted by thus further rationalizes her decision. Vladek end up being revisited in the process of tex- This sequence uses the tape recorder—ironically, tualization by Art; ironic authentication reminds us a documentarian’s tool—as a prop to underline the of the particular choices involved in the construction activity of Spiegelman as artificer, for the subtle dis- of passages we have already read. For instance, one connect between the two versions of Richieu’s death scene finds Art, Vladek, and Vladek’s second wife, shows how deliberately Spiegelman has shaped Mala, looking over a rough version of one of the ear- Vladek’s story. The tape recorder thus performs a lier episodes in Maus, recently “sketch[ed] out” by Art: kind of ironic authentication, destabilizing Maus’s claims to literal truth. At the same time, the scene ART. And here’s you, saying: “Ach. When I think with the tape recorder reestablishes, beyond ques- of them, it still makes me cry!” tion, Spiegelman’s debt to his father and his concern VLADEK. Yes. Still it makes me cry! (1:133) for documentary evidence. Thus Maus’s fidelity to “truth” is reaffirmed, even as our sense of Spiegel- The scene in question (in which some of Vladek’s man’s creative process is complicated. friends are executed for black marketeering) appears This scene takes on added resonance because of just two chapters before (1:84). its crucially timed reminder of Richieu, the unseen,

144 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS unknown brother with whom Art confesses to feel- is Spiegelman’s professed preference for cartooning ing a kind of “sibling rivalry” (2:15) and to whom as “diagramming,” as opposed to illustration (see his Spiegelman partly dedicates Maus volume 2 (it is introduction to Breakdowns; “Commix” 69); this also dedicated to his own daughter Nadja). Ironi- serves his desire to avoid a too-literal, sentimentaliz- cally, “Richieu” is what Vladek, having grown weak ing treatment of the Holocaust. Such a treatment, and delirious, calls Art in the book’s final scene. Thomas Doherty suggests, would threaten to play Spiegelman highlights this irony by positioning the into Nazism’s reactionary aesthetic, with its emphasis retelling of Richieu’s death at the beginning of this on the hypnotic qualities of the literal, the specular, final chapter—the chapter that brings Maus to a and the speciously “realistic.” Cartooning, Doherty moving end with the image of Vladek and Anja’s points out, defines itself “against the aesthetics of shared tombstone. This revealing use of the tape photographic reproduction or realist representation” recorder enables Spiegelman to reunite symbolically (74). A desire to avoid such literal-minded represen- the four members of his sundered family (Vladek, tation seems to underlie much Holocaust narrative, Anja, Richieu, and himself) within a single chapter. particularly visual narratives that favor indirection Besides the tape recorder, photographs also per- over “realistic” depiction. Recall in this regard Alain form ironic authentication in Maus. Specifically, they Resnais’s documentary Night and Fog (1955), which challenge Spiegelman’s use of the animal metaphor combines horrific archival images with suggestive by offering precisely analogical images of “real” original footage of the now-abandoned camps, human beings. Indeed, the presence of photographs accompanied by voice-over commentary that prob- in Maus goes against the grain of Spiegelman’s nar- lematizes the very idea of a Holocaust film. Alter- rative technique, for photos, despite their constructed nately, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) avoids nature, are generally assumed to offer a value- archival footage of the Nazi camps altogether, in neutral, purely denotative vision of persons and favor of interviews with surviving captives and cap- places.3 As such, they conflict with Spiegelman’s car- tors. Even Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993), toonal renditions of character, which are crypto- the best-known Hollywoodization of Holocaust nar- graphic rather than strictly representational. In fact rative, employs stark black-and-white cinemato- Maus constitutes a visual argument between these graphy as a distancing and contextualizing device two approaches: documentary photo-realism (privi- (Doherty 76). Spiegelman, suspicious of “realistic” leged in Spiegelman’s approach to setting and signifi- graphics in comics, quite consciously deployed car- cant objects) and cartoonal symbolism (privileged in toonal simplification to avoid making the material his treatment of character). The former, “realism,” banal. leans heavily on photographic and diagrammatic ref- Yet the Holocaust narrator also has an ethical erences to authenticate its claims, while the latter, imperative to represent details as accurately as possi- symbolism, avoids photographic individuation, mak- ble. Fidelity to truth is essential to writing the Holo- ing Spiegelman’s cartoon characters into generic caust; anything less trivializes the matter. (Regarding counters through which we infer the actual people fictionality versus “authenticity” in Holocaust narra- involved. Though Spiegelman makes expert use of tive, see, for example, Horowitz’s Voicing the Void, verbal cues to distinguish one character from which makes particular reference to Maus.) Reliance another, his graphic treatment of characters stresses on photographic reference is part of the drive for their collective rather than individual identities. In historiographic authority that inevitably underlies contrast, photo-realism seeks to ground representa- any serious depiction of the Nazi genocide. In Maus, tion in the specifics of person and place. Spiegelman takes pains to show himself digging for This visual argument helps explain Spiegelman’s corroborative references, including not only diaristic complex protocols of authentication. Behind these but also photo-reference. When he cannot find such protocols lie two contradictory imperatives. The first references, the absence of documentation makes it

145 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS harder to “visualize” his story—as when, for instance, latter seems to slip into the past completely at the he cannot find visual evidence of what a tin shop in end of volume II, as 2 calls Art “Richieu.” This photo Auschwitz looked like (2:46). (The Maus CD-ROM, also points up the absurdity of Art’s sibling rivalry released in 1994, gives ample evidence of Spiegelman’s with his “ghost-brother”: though Art imagines that efforts to shore up his research photographically.) Richieu would have become a wealthy and successful “creep,” as if to upbraid Art for his own failures (2:15), in reality Art knows nothing about him. Richieu THE FINAL PHOTOGRAPH: HISTORY has been reduced to nothing more than the static, MEETS FANTASY unknowable figure (“It”) in an old photograph. The third and final real photograph, a postwar Besides much documentary material based at least in souvenir snapshot of Vladek in a “new and clean” part on photographs, Maus incorporates numerous concentration camp uniform, comes but two pages drawings of photos, as well as three actual photo- before the end of Maus (2:134). Here we finally see graphs that directly challenge its animal metaphors. Vladek in human guise, and he appears shockingly The presence of these photos in the text deserves real, in contrast to his minimalist “mouse” form further discussion, because Spiegelman’s invocation throughout the text (fig. 57). This neat and handsome of photography represents ironic authentication at photo supports his earlier claim to have been “a nice, its most complex. By including both photos and handsome boy” (1:13). The image is large, and tipped simulated photos, Spiegelman plays the contradic- at a cockeyed angle on the page (a protocol of tory drives for cartoonal symbolism and for photo- Spiegelman’s: tipped panels are a formal intensifier realism against each other. used throughout to stress key moments). It comes as The first of the “real” photos, one of young Art the climax of a sequence in postwar Poland, in which and his mother, Anja, creeps in as part of Spiegel- Anja waits anxiously for news of her husband. When man’s interpolated underground comix short story, she sees this souvenir, enclosed in a letter from “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” (from 1972), which Vladek, Anja cries out, “My God—Vladek is really comes back to haunt Art in volume 1 (100–103). alive!” (2:134). This photo presages their final reunion Though small, and presented without explicit com- and is evidently an object of great symbolic heft in ment, this photograph concretely testifies to a mother- the Spiegelman household. “Anja kept this picture son relationship that otherwise exists only in the always,” says Vladek. “I have it still now in my desk!” book’s past tense. Like the claustrophobic scratch- On hearing this, Art immediately goes to find this board expressionism of “Hell Planet” itself, this image, saying, “ I need that photo in my book!” The photo undermines Spiegelman’s predominant animal next panel shows him gazing at the snapshot. metaphor. The second actual photo appears in the “Incredible!” he says, while his bedridden father dedication to volume 2: Spiegelman’s unknown continues his tale (2:135). Indeed, the intrusion of brother, Richieu, poisoned at age five or six. Richieu’s the photo into Spiegelman’s tale comes as an incred- portrait prepares for Art’s discussion of him some ten ible formal and emotional shock. Larger than previ- pages later: “I didn’t think about him much when I ous photos, this snapshot makes unprecedented was growing up. . . . He was mainly a large, blurry claims on the reader. Unlike the photo of Anja and photograph hanging in my parents’ bedroom. . . . Art in “Prisoner on the Hell Planet,” it is not bracketed The photo never threw tantrums or got in any kind by prior contextualization as part of a comic-within- of trouble. . . . It was an ideal kid, and I was a pain in a-comic. Unlike the dedicatory photo of Richieu at the ass. I couldn’t compete” (2:15). The positioning the beginning of volume 2, Vladek’s portrait is incor- of this photo, again, underscores the presence of porated into the narrative structure of the main the past in the lives of Spiegelman’s parents, both text. This photo brings a non-metaphorical Vladek his mother, Anja, and his father, Vladek. Indeed, the into the context of metaphor, finally overturning

146 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS

Figure 57. Spiegelman, Maus 2:134 (detail). From Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman, copyright © 1991 by Art Spiegelman. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Spiegelman’s substitution of animal faces for human by agreeing to tutor a Polish kapo (supervisor). ones. Beyond functioning as privileged testimony When telling of this accomplishment, Vladek takes to Vladek’s “real” existence—a sign that someone, obvious pride in the way he was able to maintain a somewhere, really posed for this photo, and may have clean appearance even in the camps: “Always I was really lived this story—the photo works ironically on a handsome . . . but with everything fitted, I looked number of levels, and actually destabilizes rather than like a million!” (2:33). The climactic photo of Vladek, affirms Maus’s documentary realism. two pages from the book’s end, repeats this proud For one thing, we are told that this photo repre- self-assertion, yet overshadows the harsh realities sents a carefully constructed evocation of the Nazi of life in the camps. The posed photo re-creates camps. It’s a souvenir, after all, paid for and posed the Vladek of the camps who supposedly looked by Vladek. It presents a handsome, idealized image “like a million,” but within the more civilized—thus of the camp prisoner, posed in front of a curtain incredible—context of a studio portrait. This is not a whose vertical folds evoke studio portraiture at its documentary photo, then, but a message intended most conventional (2:134). The mere fact that the for his beloved Anja, whom he wants to reassure. It uniform is new, clean, and well-fitted belies the seem- is less a depiction of the reality of the camps than a ing documentary value of the image, for Vladek’s gift, to remind his wife that Vladek has survived and own narrative, earlier, shows just how difficult it was remains the sturdy, handsome man she has known. to get a clean, fitting uniform in the camps: In For another thing, this photograph purports to Auschwitz, he has told us, prisoners suffered from ill- corroborate what is surely one of the most fanciful fitting clothes and shoes, though he himself was at episodes in Maus: Vladek’s version of what Anja’s last able to secure clothes that fit him “like tailored” life was like in postwar Sosnowiec, Poland, during

147 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS their enforced separation. In this sequence, Anja ball, reliving Anja’s past and foreseeing her future. consults not only the local Jewish organization but The crystal first shows the image of “a child . . . a also a Gypsy fortune-teller, for some news of her dead child” (Richieu’s likeness appears in the globe, husband (2:133). A six-panel scene in the Gypsy’s dressed in his trademark overalls), then reveals wagon represents, presumably, Spiegelman’s extrap- Vladek, in concentration camp uniform: “Now I see olation from his father’s extrapolation from a story a man . . . illness . . . It’s your husband! He’s been Anja once told. It purports to give Anja’s point of very very ill . . . He’s coming—he’s coming home! view, but we already know that Anja’s point of view You’ll get a sign that he’s alive by the time the moon is inadmissible, because her story has been lost. is full!” (2:133). The Gypsy goes on to foretell Anja’s In effect, this imaginative scene denies that loss, a life in “a faraway place,” a new life including loss around which, as Michael Rothberg points out, “another little boy,” while Anja looks on, rapt. On Spiegelman has structured the entire narrative. Indeed, the following page, the letter arrives with Vladek’s Art desires no less than to occupy (in Rothberg’s photo—the sign—and Anja declares, “It’s just like phrase) “the impossible position” of Anja, who is the Gypsy said” (2:134). The photograph of Vladek not so much a presence in Maus as an absence, a dominates the bottom half of the page, as if to lend lost trace (676). Said loss spurs the conflict between authority to this fanciful episode. Vladek and Art in volume 1, when father reveals to Accuracy is not the point here; in fact fantasy son that he burnt Anja’s records and personal effects plays a big part in these last few pages. The clichéd in a fit of grief after her suicide. This confession characterization of the Gypsy moth, for instance, fits angers Art, who feels the loss of his mother’s story as into a larger pattern of comically indulgent animal a kind of artistic privation, at one point confessing, metaphors shown in the last chapter. We see, for “I wish I got Mom’s story while she was alive. She instance, Swedish reindeer in a Stockholm depart- was more sensitive. . . . It would give the book some ment store (2:125), as well as tiger-striped “mouse” balance” (1:132). Anja’s voice has been forever children born of a Gentile woman and Jewish man silenced, so that Maus becomes Vladek’s tale perforce. (2:131). Such literal-minded metaphors play with Anja is usually represented from Vladek’s point of the deterministic and stereotypic connotations of view. Her life, as Sara Horowitz notes, cannot be told Spiegelman’s technique, pushing it toward self- “except through the prisms of her husband’s and her parody. Before this, we have occasionally seen ani- son’s memories” (3). Yet even Vladek doesn’t know mals representing other ethnicities or nationalities the minute details of Anja’s experience; by his own besides Jews, Germans, and Poles, yet such scenes admission, he does not know where Anja went while are only vaguely suggestive, rather than specific, he was in Dachau, late in the war. He only knows about the connection between animal metaphor and that she made it back to Sosnowiec before him cultural identity. The last chapter, in contrast, depicts (2:103–4). So when Vladek purports to tell Anja’s incidental characters in guises that specifically reflect story, just a few pages before the end of the book, cultural clichés or jokes: Swedish reindeer, Gypsy the impossibility of accuracy should be obvious. moths. These comical metaphors extend Spiegelman’s Anja’s life in postwar Sosnowiec can only be a matter cat-and-mouse logic into the postwar period, but of conjecture. also parody it: for the first time, Maus’s animal fig- In spite of Anja’s essential muteness, the father- ures become jokey. Such overkill forces us, once again, son collaboration here produces an imaginative to recognize Spiegelman’s gimmick for what it is. The episode involving her consultation with the Gypsy. real photo of Vladek that follows is the author’s coup Anja is shown as desolate, eyes downcast, shoulders de grace, his ultimate exit strategy, for it explodes the slumped in misery. The Gypsy herself is (of course) a metaphors on which the entire text is built. moth, with antennae, wings, and a kerchief tied This ultimate chapter revels in the collision of his- around her head; she gazes into (of course) a crystal tory and imagination: ironic authentication turns

148 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS back on itself, in dizzying involutions. As Maus nears invokes and indeed “attaches” to his pages: for its end, Vladek increasingly lives in the past, and his example, train tickets, diagrams, and maps. As noted photographic self-portrait is but one way that he in chapter 2, the presence of these drawn objects, idealizes his postwar activities. Through fantasy he mimicking found objects, reinforces the diaristic directs his story toward his emotional reunion with immediacy of Maus as an artifact: the pages resem- Anja in Sosnowiec—the book’s last page (2:136). ble a scrapbook or album, in which heirlooms and Spiegelman directs the story this way as well, order- personal narratives are interleaved. The most telling ing his father’s reminiscences non-chronologically, so of these heirlooms are the photographs, which are as to focus everything at book’s end on Vladek and usually charged with great emotional significance— Anja’s joyful reunion. When we finally see the couple as in, for instance, the aforementioned scene during embrace, Vladek, now bedridden and apparently Vladek and Anja’s courtship, when Vladek frames a delirious, tells Art: “More I don’t need to tell you. portrait photo sent by Anja (fig. 56). The emotional We were both very happy, and lived happy, happy impact of that simulated “photo” is such that it sel- ever after.” Drifting off to sleep—in an ironic rever- dom occurs to readers to question the very oddness sal of the conventional “bedtime story” scene, in of Spiegelman’s technique (1:17). It is odd: the ren- which child sleeps and parent tiptoes away—Vladek dering of the “photo” carefully mimics the appear- says, “I’m tired from talking, Richieu, and it’s enough ance of an old-fashioned photographic print, right stories for now. . . .” His unself-conscious drifting down to its scalloped border, yet what we see of into the past reinforces our sense, slowly built through- Anja, as ever, is her “mouseness.” The photo as out Maus, that nothing can be as real for Vladek as object, rendered with documentary realism, clashes his formative experiences in the Holocaust. The pho- with the object of the photo: a person as a mouse. tographic portrait drives this home, as does the For Spiegelman’s characters, as in real life, photo- tombstone at the foot of the last page, which names graphs testify—they serve as documents, memen- both Vladek and Anja: the two are again reunited, tos, and declarations of feeling—yet the inescapable this time in death. animal metaphor belies their seeming authenticity. For Art, this moment must come as a bittersweet Even more, the reproductions of actual photographs, recognition, for he himself came after Vladek’s and in particular the crucially positioned photo of wartime experiences. Indeed his father’s final remarks Vladek, unravel Spiegelman’s artifice. effectively transform him into a living ghost of his The effect of the photo in Maus’s last chapter brother, Richieu. In some sense Art disappears from depends partly on the prominence of drawn photo- the final moments of the narrative, while Vladek graphs in the previous chapter, which climaxes with rewrites history as he would have it: “We were both the opening of a box of family snapshots (2:114–15). very happy, and lived happy, happy ever after.” This box, which Vladek has recovered from his Vladek’s photograph, two pages prior, presages this closet, includes photos saved long ago by Richieu’s move as it both ratifies and falsifies his experience as Polish governess, as well as more recent snapshots a survivor of Nazi genocide. In short, Maus moves that show the few surviving family members in the away from verisimilitude even as Spiegelman brings postwar period. Taken together, these photos testify the photograph forward to finally “show” his father. to the losses that both sides of Art’s family have suf- In the process, he achieves a kind of symbolic rap- fered, for almost everyone seen in these snapshots prochement with Vladek, in effect collaborating with has died. As Vladek and Art discuss family history, him to bring Anja’s story to life. the photos overlap the panels of their conversation, This final photograph must be read in context, for crowding Vladek’s dialogue balloons; finally, the it subverts, and is subverted by, Spiegelman’s use of snapshots seem to spill from the box, down the drawn “photographs” throughout Maus. Photos are page, piling one on top of the other and bleeding off among the many paper objects that Spiegelman the bottom margin. They surround and hem in

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Vladek and Art, who sit on a sofa talking about the complex, and more ironic, because Spiegelman past (2:115). Here again Spiegelman shows extraor- acknowledges the deliberate, posed quality of the dinary care with the rendering of these pictures as image, and positions it to comment subtly on his objects. Varied borders (note that prewar photo- father’s version of events, as Vladek slowly slips into graphs look distinctly different from postwar ones), an idealized past. The photo speaks not to the docu- dated inscriptions, even a face cropped from one of mentary truth but to what we want to believe. It the photos—these graphic elements reinforce the affirms Vladek as a hero, in spite of all we know. As power of these snapshots as testimonials. Yet the Maus moves toward the predetermined reunion of animal metaphor is constant, the book’s cartoon Vladek and Anja, we already know that their life after shorthand dutifully preserved. the war will not be a “happy ever after” but rather a This scene in the penultimate chapter reminds us confused and haunted one that leads to Anja’s sui- of the crucial importance of photos to Spiegelman’s cide; we already know that the story cannot “end” history but cannot prepare us for the shock of Vladek’s anywhere but will continue to haunt Art’s life. We “real,” human countenance two pages from the end. know these things, but still Spiegelman privileges The momentary defeat of metaphor in the last chapter Vladek’s carefully groomed likeness, as if to support boldly asserts the falseness of Spiegelman’s drawn his father’s turn toward a triumphantly happy ending. “photos” throughout the text. Maus’s visual argu- In sum, this break with the book’s reigning ment between documentary realism and cartooning, metaphor represents not an uncomplicated assertion underscored by Spiegelman’s reliance on drawn pho- of truth but an ironic tribute to his father’s powers tos, at last comes to a head in this singular image, this of imagination. The photo is no more “real” than naked violation of Spiegelman’s artistic decorum Spiegelman’s cartoons but seems to represent Vladek (2:134). Yet, again, this photo in no way represents a as Vladek would have himself represented. Beyond simple “reality.” Rather, it is a simulacrum of Vladek’s either naïve photo-realism or ironic symbolism, own devising, a deliberate reappropriation of his Spiegelman’s placement of this final snapshot both experience as the Nazis’ prisoner. Moreover, Spiegel- affirms and subverts Vladek’s role as a storyteller, man has positioned it to corroborate a sequence allowing Vladek’s ego-image (as knowing Fotoobjekt) that, as noted, shades from documentary scrupu- to assert itself within his son’s text. The photograph lousness to fanciful supposition. The photo represents does not simply claim to speak the truth in the face the triumphant reassertion of a father’s self-image of skepticism but rather cements the father-son col- into his son’s text, an image that breaks through the laboration, underscoring its profoundly intersubjec- self-imposed discipline of Spiegelman’s metaphor. If tive nature. Through Vladek and Art’s collaboration, the collaboration of Art and Vladek is, as Rick different versions of the truth have been negotiated Iadonisi remarks, “a struggle for control” (53), then and different interpretations of reality reconciled. at this moment Vladek seems ascendant, and Art awed into silence. Again, this climactic movement in Maus demon- CONCLUSION strates ironic authentication at its most complex. Rather than trumpet the fictiveness of his creation— Maus demonstrates the potential, both artistic and like Clowes, Crumb, and Hernandez in our previous sociopolitical, of autobiographical comics, and in chapter—Spiegelman appears to defer to the photo- effect has placed autobiography at the center of graph as verifier, as an immediate, incontrovertible recent comics criticism. Maus also demonstrates, testimony of the life recorded in his book. He does decisively, that “truth” in autobiography has to be not insist on the ironies of his work here, but rather earned, not just taken for granted. This truth is a seems to assert the truth, daring to break through matter not of verifiability but of trustworthiness, not so his self-imposed limits. Yet the effect is all the more much a constant quality as the result of a continual

150 IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS renegotiation between the artist, his materials, and powerfully demonstrate that the personal is indeed his audience (and in this case, his father, as both political, and vice versa. Self-reflexivity becomes his informant and collaborator). It is, in sum, a rhetorical means of achieving complicity with the audience, matter. Ironic authentication, then, need not boil authenticating his vision of self and history, and down to self-regarding playfulness or mere navel- speaking about an unspeakable reality “worse than gazing equivocation. On the contrary, it may represent my darkest dreams.” To place himself within that a passage through skepticism and anxiety— anxiety history, Spiegelman has to unravel Maus and force at times strong enough to threaten the singularity of us to take part in its making. the self-image, as also seen in Clowes, Crumb, and Clearly, Maus sprang from internal necessity. The Hernandez—toward a commitment to self-under- same can be said of Green’s Binky Brown, R. Crumb’s standing and honest communication. “Many Faces,” and the best of autobiographical In Maus, as in Binky Brown, the passage is dire. comics in general. Green’s work, for instance, cri- The claims of autobiographical comics are here put tiques what he viewed as an oppressive institution to the severest test, under the greatest pressure, due and explores how that institution fueled his anxi- to the ethical demands of both familial biography eties, while Crumb’s, on the other hand, offers the and Holocaust narrative. Like Justin Green’s critique cartoonist a way of exerting control over his public of Catholicism, Maus dares to treat larger sociopolit- self, as celebrity threatens to alienate him from his ical issues through the lens of personal trauma, and own likeness. Such autobiographical work, born of so demands the acutest sort of self-awareness. underground and alternative comics, reveals the art Indeed, self-referentiality proves essential to ratify- form’s potential for both frightful intimacy and ing Spiegelman’s comic as an act of cultural inter- provocative cultural argument. This is why the auto- vention. By continually questioning the naïve notion biographical genre matters, and why the anxious of autobiography as truth-telling, Spiegelman can tension between artifice and authenticity remains a recuperate the emotional claims of the genre and vital area for study.

151 CHAPTERCHAPTER SIX 1

WHITHER THE GRAPHIC NOVEL?

This book has bid for the recognition of comics as a literary form, and in particular for the understanding of alternative comics as an innovative and important field of comics production. We have sounded the origins of that field, charting its development through the comix counterculture of the 1960s and the subsequent rise of a specialized comics market, one that encouraged the newly recognized form of the graphic novel. We have considered the potential of comics as a medium—that comic art is not a form necessarily defined by simplicity or transparency but rather a potentially complex narrative instrument, and potentially challenging reading experience. We have seen that complexity play out in a major body of work, that of Gilbert Hernandez, in the process discovering how that work testifies to a tense negotiation between artist and marketplace—a tug-of-war between artistic ambition and commercial demand that ultimately affects both form and content. Finally, we have seen how alternative comics introduced an explicitly autobiographical mode that raised issues of self-representation and authenticity, complicating the always complex matter of autobiographical writing and suggesting the power of comics to imbricate the personal and the political. Major works such as Green’s Binky Brown and Spiegelman’s Maus reveal this power and constitute a significant departure, both from comics tradition and from the canons of traditional literary autobiography. At every level, alternative comics both appeal to and productively challenge our preconceptions about literature. As of this writing, times are good for such alternative comics. In particular, the graphic novel has become a lively, burgeoning genre. Though mainstream publishers’ interest in the genre has been fitful at best,1 it is now definitely on the rise: graphic novels are surging into bookstores and libraries, and the book industry has put out the welcome mat, making room for comics in the trade press and at industry shows (for example, the Book Expo America 2003 included

152 WHITHER THE GRAPHIC NOVEL? a “Graphic Novel Pavilion” and much programming that title and why, until recently, I have found myself focused on the genre). Since 2000 the genre has nervously bracketing the term “graphic novel” within received a terrific boost from translated Japanese quotation marks (as above).2 As I do, I will return, one manga, most notably lines published by TOKYOPOP and last time, to some of the economic/industrial issues VIZ; at the same time, Pantheon’s graphic novel line that have bedeviled previous chapters and will try to (building on the success of Spiegelman’s Maus) has suggest something like an economics of the art form. put alternative comics on the front burner. Another I think this is an important note to end on, as it has encouraging sign has been the movement of comic implications for future study. book companies toward the general book trade, in particular the signing of distribution deals between alternative comics publishers and major book publisher/ THE DEVIL OF SERIALIZATION distributors (Fantagraphics with W. W. Norton in fall 2001, Drawn and Quarterly with Chronicle Books in By and large, graphic novels are created serially. The fall 2002, then with Farrar, Straus & Giroux in summer longer works studied in the above cleave to this rule: 2004). The outlook for long-form comics is consider- the graphic novel usually appears as successive install- ably healthier than in the past. ments, published periodically in anticipation of the Indeed, as noted in chapter 1, the “graphic novel” completed work. As chapter 1 observes, this was the has become a kind of totem, enjoying strong pres- case for the graphic novels that catapulted the genre ence among publishers, booksellers, librarians, critics, to at least a tentative respectability in the late 1980s: fans—and scholars. Its time has come. Graphic nov- volume 1 of Spiegelman’s Maus, originally serialized els have sparked salutary changes, both creative and in Raw starting in 1980; Miller’s The Dark Knight critical, in the comics field; without these changes, Returns, first published as four successive booklets in one doubts that scholarly texts about comics would 1986; and Moore and Gibbons’s Watchmen, pub- enjoy the kind of attention they are now receiving. lished as twelve comic book episodes in 1986–87. Yet there is much about comics, historically and aes- This was also the case for many other acclaimed thetically, that may be lost in the drive to confer legit- graphic novels between 1987 and 2000, whether dis- imacy on the graphic novel—and there remain tributed to the mainstream book trade or confined to economic complications, obstacles frankly, that may the direct market: volumes by Los Bros Hernandez, hinder the form’s further development. Again we Harvey Pekar, Chester Brown, Dave Sim, Dan Clowes, have to ask the sobering question of just how comics Chris Ware, Debbie Drechsler, Neil Gaiman, and many get to market and what packages or formats they are others. These projects sprang in whole or in part from forced to adopt, or are likely to adopt—a question periodicals. Some, like Drechsler’s Daddy’s Girl, work broached in earlier chapters but demanding fuller through thematic repetition and variation, compiling treatment. In short, we need to interrogate the idea short, distinct pieces to achieve a greater cumulative of the “graphic novel” and carefully place it in its effect. Others, like Sim’s Cerebus, consist of hundreds economic and generic context. of pages of unbroken continuity, collated from ongo- In the preceding, we have noted the difficulties ing comic book series. Though there are exceptions to that attend serial publication and the reformatting of this general rule (to which we will return momentar- comic book stories as “novels.” We have also sug- ily), serialization remains the standard. gested, indirectly, that too exclusive an emphasis on The serialization of graphic novels parallels the the “graphic novel” can impoverish or obstruct practice of serializing long-form comics, or bandes appreciation of the art form. Since I once toyed with dessinées, or manga, or what-have-you, in other cul- the idea of titling this study The Rise of the Graphic tures. The practice varies in popularity and importance Novel—a wave of the hand at Ian Watt—I think I from country to country. On the European scene, the should finish it by explaining why I felt I had to discard serial has become less important in recent years: the

153 WHITHER THE GRAPHIC NOVEL? history of francophone “BD” publishing, for instance, of parts: novels were typically divided up into vol- has been one of gradual shifting away from a primary umes through the institution of the circulating emphasis on periodicals to an emphasis on the self- library, spread out over months in literary magazines contained album format (Europe’s nearest analogue to (for example, Dickens in Bentley’s Miscellany or the “graphic novel”). In this connection, witness the Household Words, Thackeray in Fraser’s Magazine), discontinuation in 1998 of the respected French or issued as monthly pamphlets à la Pickwick Papers anthology (A Suivre), after twenty years of publication, (see Erickson 158–62). Yet the fact of part-issue is and the absence of other such anthologies—Pilote, for often bracketed off or ignored in histories of this once example—which once provided a steady supply of disreputable, now central, literary genre. Granted, serialized work in anticipation of albums. There are scholars have begun to ask about the effects of serial- exceptions, of course (particularly in the small press, ization on, say, Dickens’s and Thackeray’s works, but where avant-garde anthologies have performed an criticism still favors the monumental, collected novel important role), but for the most part the francophone over the relatively tentative and fragmented experi- market has retreated from periodicals. (Given France’s ence offered by part-issue. The widespread adoption status as a magnet culture for continental comics, this of the term graphic novel would seem to reflect a sim- shift has implications for all of western Europe.) ilar preference among authors and critics of comics, In the Japanese manga market, by contrast, seriali- but, as noted before, unfortunately tends to hide the zation in huge, cheaply printed weeklies and month- complexity and precariousness of comics publishing, lies continues to be the favored route for long-form obscuring the long form’s dependence on the serial. narratives. Short installments in disposable magazines, Just as scholars have begun to study the effects of which contain dozens of comics and scads of other serialization on the form and content of the English editorial matter, pave the way for more durable vol- novel, so we should give attention to the ways seri- umes of collected work, with popular series spawning alization inevitably shapes the long-form comic book thousands of pages of continuity in book form. With or graphic novel. Besides the obvious advantages of manga accounting for a huge percentage (one typi- financial support for the author—a matter to which I cally hears estimates of a fourth to a third) of all pub- will return below—I would tentatively suggest three lishing in Japan, the staple anthologies would seem in kinds of effects that serialization can exert on the little danger of disappearing, and the material they graphic novel when viewed as a complete text: support is increasingly finding its way into the United (1) Serialization may influence the very structure States and other countries (indeed manga are now of a graphic novel, as it encourages authors to build flooding the U.S. market). In contrast to the BD tradi- discrete episodes, linked by thematic and motific tion, in which the slender, hardcover album has repetition, rather than tightly structured, overarch- become the standard, Japan’s manga market privi- ing plotlines. For example, Daddy’s Girl (1996), by leges either frequent serial chapters or the much the aforementioned Debbie Drechsler, approaches longer, often hundreds of pages long, book form—an its harrowing subject, the tangled emotional and economic arrangement facilitated by a rigid studio social consequences of sexual abuse, through a series system of production. of roughly chronological episodes, all centering on There is ample precedent for such thriving serial the isolation of the young protagonist, Lilly. Most of publication in the history of literature. The practice these episodes were previously printed in magazines of serializing long-form comics echoes the well- or newspapers, but they have been sequenced in book established (though now unusual) practice of selling form by Drechsler for a devastating cumulative effect. novels through part-issue: by library subscription, A prose analogue for this might be Sandra Cisneros’s within magazines, or in successive pamphlets. In fact celebrated novel The House on Mango Street (1984), the history of the English novel throughout the eigh- which consists of carefully sequenced stories, vignettes, teenth and nineteenth centuries is predominantly one and prose poems that, taken together, convey a young

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Latina’s struggle to understand a life of poverty and superhero comics. To read a single volume that col- alienation. In closing her book, Drechsler uses the lates several months’ worth of superhero “continuity” miniature form of the comic strip—a single-page between two covers is to be reminded of just how vignette—much as Cisneros uses lyrical prose poems discontinuous the experience of reading a monthly throughout her text, to reinforce theme and mood. serial really is, for, typically, each successive chapter A single page, punctuating the book, serves to includes much redundant exposition as well as brief, sum up the awful loneliness that characterizes Lilly teasing glimpses of subplots still gestating. These sub- throughout. plots may linger, fecklessly, for chapter after chapter, Similarly, Will Eisner’s New York: The Big City without gaining momentum, then abruptly, arbitrarily, (1986) assembles various vignettes from the (now leap to the fore. Thus even a very good adventure defunct) Will Eisner Quarterly, imposing shape on serial of this type may read poorly in collected form. them with thematic chapter headings—and through (2) On the other hand, the serial packaging of a the overall packaging of the book as a collection of long-form comic lends certain structural and design linked episodes set in a specific place. By traditional elements that can be used to reinforce the shape and literary standards, The Big City is not a “novel” at all continuity of an overarching story. For example, in the but something like a series of sketches; yet the aforementioned Watchmen, as originally serialized in organizing of those sketches into book form gives twelve issues, packaging underscores the prevailing the project, again, a cumulative effect greater than mood of paranoia and expectancy. On each succes- the sum of its parts. Significantly, both Daddy’s Girl sive back cover, the slowly advancing minute hand of and The Big City are composed of short pieces culled a clock, or watch, counts down toward midnight, and from larger anthologies, in contrast to those graphic the series’ apocalyptic finale. Also, the front covers novels that compile whole issues of comic books in depict not characters but extreme close-ups of signifi- the traditional format. cant objects, anticipating the reappearance of the Some graphic novels use episodic structure to build object in the first panel of each chapter, so that, for longer narratives that ultimately become more focused instance, a bloodied “smiley face” button appears and cohesive than expected. For example, Dan both on the front of the first issue and in the first Clowes’s Ghost World (1997), originally serialized in panel of the story proper. These objects are associated his series Eightball, quietly builds toward a moment with key characters and help to focus each successive of crisis in the tense relationship between two friends, chapter around one such character. Enid and Becky. Each successive episode depicts the Also, Moore and Gibbons cannily exploit the anomie and cynicism of these two young women in a “wait time” between the penultimate and final chap- different situation; taken together, the episodes push ters by ending issue No. 11 with a terrible disclosure: toward that moment when Enid will have to choose that the megalomaniacal plot just described by the either to go away to college or to remain in her story’s villain (antihero, if you prefer) has already ambiguous, unresolved relationship with Becky. Thus, been carried out, resulting in a catastrophic explosion though Clowes seems at first to surrender to the in the heart of New York City. As the final page of enervation of the two women, he also suggests the No. 11 wipes out various supporting players in a limitations imposed by their persistently ironic and blinding white flash, we realize that the villain has hopeless outlook. Deceptively low-affect, Ghost already succeeded; the dialogue shown in the pre- World finally builds to a powerful conclusion that ceding pages does not anticipate his success but suggests betrayal, self-defeat, and irrecoverable loss. crowns it. While the story has been cross-cutting In contrast, more prosaic and less interesting between the villain’s lair and the streets of New York, examples of this kind of repetitive and episodic time has not been unfolding linearly, for the New structure may be found in most of the so-called Yorkers we have been watching are already dead; it is graphic novels culled from the continuities of periodic too late for the “heroes” to do anything about it.

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Figure 58. A highly-charged interchapter break: the last page of Watchmen No. 11, and the first page of No. 12. By Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. © 1987 DC Comics. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

And then we are forced to wait a month (or more) for A similar moment occurs between the sixth and the succeeding installment. When No. 12 begins, the seventh chapters of Peter Milligan and Duncan opening pages—wordless, full-page panoramas of Fegredo’s Enigma, originally serialized in eight issues mass death—break away from the prevailing gridlike, by DC’s Vertigo line in 1993. In this aggressive dis- nine-panel layout of the rest of the story, at last mantling of the superhero genre—like Watchmen, revealing the carnage wrought by the villain’s plot Enigma is a superhero tale indebted to alternative (fig. 58). The synapse between issues No. 11 and comics—the protagonist, Michael Smith, witnesses a No. 12 is a cliffhanger in the classic sense, except that series of bizarre and horrific events precipitated by it is built around a fait accompli, not a thing to be the coming of the Enigma: his favorite 1960s comic prevented. What happens just before the synapse is book superhero, now come to life. These events con- the very thing that the superheroes were supposed to spire to force Michael into confronting his own stop, so that the cliffhanger consists of wondering homosexuality. The series’ crowning moment occurs how the world will respond, not whether this horror when Michael consummates his relationship with the can be avoided. (This is just one of many subversions Enigma in a sexual sense—that is, when he makes of genre that Watchmen performs.) love to the icon of his childhood. Milligan’s script

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Figure 59. Another heavily fraught break: the last page of Enigma No. 6, and the first of No. 7. By Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo. © 1993 Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo. Used with permission. moves the reader to this emotion-fraught moment at drawing of the protagonist, Michael Smith (fig. 60). the end of the sixth chapter, or issue, then picks up This reversal is in keeping with the story’s shifting the story at the beginning of the seventh after the emphasis, from the surreal and hyperviolent encounters event, in a post-coital reverie that deliberately teases of the early chapters to Michael’s quiet self-realization the reader with the thought of what he has missed: in the latter half. Like Watchmen’s consistent cover “Actually you should have seen it. You really missed scheme, the shifting designs of Enigma provide an something” (fig. 59). opportunity to influence the reader’s take on the Again, the packaging of the story as eight issues story in specific ways before the reader has even reinforces its dramatic argument. Fegredo’s cover opened the package. illustrations embed panels of line drawing within fully In short, packaging and seriality can underscore painted images of the titular Enigma, commenting on plot and theme, though the breakneck scheduling of the collision of two frames of reference—which I’m periodicals usually discourages the exploitation of tempted to call “reality” and “fantasy”—within the this potential. Creators must be both very fast and story itself. The cover to the last issue, however, possessed of a strong a priori grasp of structure to inverts this design motif, and instead embeds a small make scheduling and packaging work to the advan- painted panel of the Enigma within a larger line tage of narrative. At the same time—and here lies a

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Figure 60. Symbolic packaging: Duncan Fegredo’s covers to Enigma No. 7 and No. 8. © 1993 Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo. Used with permission. paradox—packaging and seriality are most effective entire story so far: now we are suddenly told that artistically in books that do adhere to a strict periodic Vladek, whose recollections are the book’s foundation, schedule, because the consistent intervals between has died long since. Thus we are forcibly reminded chapters can become an anticipated part of the that what Spiegelman has depicted as “the present” reading experience itself. Thus I have drawn the is already past, no less so than the memories of the above two examples from series published by DC Holocaust that his father shares. This disclosure forces Comics in traditional comic book form, series that the reader to reorient him or herself with respect to adhered to a more or less monthly schedule. time, and with respect to Vladek, whose pending Yet the serial relationship between chapters can death will now haunt the rest of the book. By reposi- be manipulated in other, less strictly periodic comics tioning the reader at the beginning of this chapter— as well: witness the ironic triumph of Spiegelman’s that is, by using this structural break to introduce Maus volume 2, whose second chapter, “Auschwitz an entirely new vantage, one from which Vladek’s (Time Flies),” records the author’s own struggle with death is known and unavoidable—Spiegelman at guilt, depression, and inertia over a period of some once undercuts and ratifies the strong sense of real- three years (see chapter 5). “Time Flies” exploits the ism that characterizes all of Art’s scenes with his interchapter “break,” or pause, to recontextualize the father. As in Watchmen and Enigma, Spiegelman

158 WHITHER THE GRAPHIC NOVEL? uses the chapter as a discrete structural element to a time and offer something like novelistic develop- enable a crucial change in perspective. This change ment of character and theme. Yet most of these series serves Spiegelman’s all-important strategy of ironic do not yield cohesive “novels” when collected in authentication (as discussed previously). book form. Though it is now common to break down The example of Maus leads to point (3), which ongoing series into successive, self-contained “arcs,” ought to be an obvious one but is hidden by the very often by different authors or teams, mainstream use of the term “graphic novel.” Authors whose work comic books still tend to be cumulative rather than is serialized while still in progress can and do reply to organic in structure. Such series tend either to capital- the public reception of their work, by commenting ize on the legendary status of some familiar property (in direct or coded fashion) on readers’ reactions, or by (for example, Batman), or to nurse long-term subplots altering the substance of their work in response to in an open-ended continuity, subplots that remain reader feedback (as did Dickens on occasion). The unresolved at the end of each arc and are manifestly point would seem obvious in the case of an ongoing designed to lure the reader back for another soap- comic book series, in which the readers’ advice and opera-like installment. While such comics may exploit feedback may be solicited quite openly, but also the creative and marketing advantages of self- applies to personal, self-directed work that would contained arcs, they still accrete story material without seem entirely aloof from reader response, such as the long-term structural aims of a Watchmen or Maus. As noted in chapter 5, “Time Flies” represents, Enigma. Seldom will a long-running monthly serial among other things, an elaborate, even tortuous, achieve the kind of closure aimed at in, for instance, response to the fame Spiegelman garnered from the Neil Gaiman’s fantasy series Sandman (1989–96), in first volume of Maus, published five years before. The which a series of short tales provided a deliberate, critical reaction to his work gets drawn into the work drawn-out denouement after the title’s climactic arc. itself, in the form of a blackly comic scene in which By the same token, stories that are planned to reporters and merchandisers vie for Spiegelman’s work as collected volumes may frustrate the expecta- attention, oblivious to the bodies of Nazi victims piled tions of serial readers, leading to a loss of readership, up around him. Despite the fact that Maus was always and of economic support—which are the most pow- intended to be read as a single work, coherent in form erful incentives for persisting in serialization in the first and expression, we stand to lose something important place. As noted in chapter 3, Gilbert and Jaime if we obscure the circumstances of its original publica- Hernandez alienated many of their readers in the lat- tion in parts (see Kannenberg, “Form” 151–54). ter half of the original Love & Rockets series by serial- Serialization, then, can allow graphic novels to izing several graphic novels at once, including Gilbert’s comment on the terms of their own reception, or oth- dauntingly complex Poison River. Though begun with erwise to change in mid-stream in response to that distinct and well-structured chapters, Poison River reception—and, again, serialization can undercut or eventually devolved into a series of unstructured reinforce a graphic novel’s structural cohesion. Serial chunks, or allotments of pages, with no concessions units (chapters or installments) can be used to impose to the periodical readership in terms of exposition or structure on a novel, or, alternately, they can compro- notes—even as the gap between successive issues of mise structure through digression, redundancy, and Love & Rockets stretched wider and wider. Readers the attenuation of suspense. More broadly, I would balked at the difficulty of River’s narrative arc, with its argue that, though some novelists can turn serializa- nonlinear structure and uncued flashbacks, and the tion to their advantage, what makes a good serial story became notorious for its byzantine complexity. may not make a good novel, and, vice versa, what Throughout this difficult period, Gilbert makes a good novel may make a poor serial. Hernandez himself continued to pour considerable Many popular “mainstream” comic books, for energy into River, which he has described as a very instance, sustain plotlines for months or even years at demanding, even consuming, “stream-of-conscious”

159 WHITHER THE GRAPHIC NOVEL? effort (Hernandez to the author, 22 Mar. 2000). Also, would seem to threaten the integrity of the work as a as noted in chapter 3, he took on additional book- whole. Finally, he suspended the project in mid-story— length projects, very different in character, as a relief something Gilbert Hernandez was apparently urged to from the pressures that River had created (hard as this do with Poison River as well, according to correspon- may be to fathom). Along the way, Poison River’s dence with this author—and launched into a conven- coherence was compromised by this grueling process, tionally paced serial of more definite duration, the compelling Hernandez to do additional work: again, historical Louis Riel (1999–2003). the novel’s single-volume edition boasted some fifty Projects like Poison River and Underwater suggest new pages of chapter headings and story material to the difficulties that face serialized graphic novels that smooth out its knotty complexities. According to aspire toward unconventional structure (as in River) or Hernandez, this part was easy; it was fitting the story pacing (as in Underwater). In such cases, the standard into so few pages in the first place that was hard. In comic book or magazine-length installment may not the aftermath of River, Gilbert and Jaime struggled to be an adequate unit for serialization, and as a result keep pace with each other, so as to put Love & the serial reading experience is fragmented and unsat- Rockets out on a more reliable schedule; this proved isfactory, unlike those graphic novels whose rhythms difficult enough that the brothers, for a time, chose to are keyed to the traditional comic book installment, discontinue the series in favor of individual publish- such as Watchmen. In short, projects like Poison River ing projects. and Underwater anticipate the finished novel without Acclaimed Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown providing whole, satisfying chapters along the way. faced a similar problem with his surreal, slow-moving, Their ambitions make for frustrating serials, though and now-suspended comic book series Underwater they are serialized nonetheless, mainly for economic (1994–97), an atmospheric treatment of the growth reasons. and development of a young girl’s mind from birth Such is arguably the case with Dave Sim’s bizarrely onwards. With dialogue that mixed snippets of English autobiographical epic Cerebus (as described in chap- with a weird invented language, evoking the child’s ter 1). In Cerebus, tightly structured chapters (for gradual acculturation into speech, Underwater offered example, the discrete chapters in the novel High what many readers saw as a frustrating experience, Society, originally serialized in issues 26 through 50) glacial in its rhythms and ungenerous to its periodic eventually gave way to roughly twenty-page allot- readership (accustomed to the more tightly paced sto- ments divided without regard to the monthly series as ries in Brown’s previous series, Yummy Fur). Reviewer such. These allotments would sometimes end, for Robert Boyd summed up the dilemma posed by the instance, in mid-scene. Perhaps because of this series: “The whole narrative concept of Underwater change in approach, sales of the monthly Cerebus seems to depend on reading it all in one go, but we get comic book dropped even as sales of the collected it in little, unsatisfying bits. I understand acutely the Cerebus volumes rose—a phenomenon also at work need to amortize the costs of production, which serial- in other long-term comic book serials, and christened ization accomplishes, but if you’re going to serialize “the Cerebus effect” by Comics Journal columnist something, each chapter should at least acknowledge Bart Beaty (“Pickle” 1). Yet Sim’s work presents an the form—each chapter should be a semi-autonomous especially difficult case because its larger ambitions, as story unit. . . . But Underwater’s chapters read like they a series of graphic novels totaling three hundred were cut randomly from a larger narrative” (42). As if issues’ worth of story, would seem to be compromised in response to reader’s complaints, Brown stepped up by the author’s frequent topical jabs at the comic the rate of his work, trying to get Underwater out on a book industry and other targets. Though these satiric more regular schedule. He also moved away from his forays remain interesting artifacts of the series qua habit of irregular layouts, back to a standard, rectilin- series—revealing as they do Sim’s awareness of his ear, six-panel grid, a move that, as Boyd suggests, monthly readership—they often serve to waylay or

160 WHITHER THE GRAPHIC NOVEL? reroute the main storyline. As argued in chapter 1, the a novel-length comic may be prohibitive, unless she/ resulting collections at times seem dated and unfo- he enjoys some means of support during that time. cused. Yet, economically if not creatively, these col- Notwithstanding the above exceptions, serialization lected volumes constituted as important a vehicle for seems essential to underwriting the production of Sim as the comic book itself. works in the long form, because it pays authors as A good serial, then, may not make a good novel, they go, and offers publishers the added advantage despite its ambitions. Conversely, a good novel may of promoting the eventual novel through tantalizing make a poor serial: take Poison River, say, or, for a installments (see Groth, “Partisan Response” 3). Bar- more recent example, The Sands by Tom Hart, which ring serialization, a comics author with his or her eye was partially serialized, then abruptly halted when the on the graphic novel typically needs some other kind author (and his publisher, the now-defunct Black Eye of work to keep body and soul together, or some sort Books) came to the conclusion that the story could of substantial advance—something hard to come by not be effectively parceled out in periodic installments in the undercapitalized world of alternative comics. because of its pacing. The Sands as a series disap- Even an author who does receive an advance for a peared, to be completed later as a single volume graphic novel, as in the case of Howard Cruse for his (Beaty, “Pickle” 2). One result of this has been some 210-page Stuck Rubber Baby (1995), may find that debate within the small press about the viability of the sheer craftwork required to complete the project simultaneously publishing comic book series and plan- cannot be financed by that advance. Cruse faced a ter- ning for their eventual compilation (a debate sparked rible dilemma when, by his own admission, the two- by Beaty and played out in the pages of The Comics year project he had envisioned ended up requiring Journal in 1998–99).3 four years to bring to press. Stuck Rubber Baby But what of the possibilities for graphic novels that, was, and is, a dense and demanding project: a semi- like most contemporary novels, are not serialized but autobiographical fiction about growing up gay in the simply published in toto? A number of examples come midst of the Civil Rights movement, populated by to mind from the book trade: for instance, Joyce dozens of distinct characters and covering many years. Brabner, Harvey Pekar, and Frank Stack’s Our Cancer Cruse’s advance (bear in mind that he was being pub- Year, published by Four Walls, Eight Windows (1994); lished by Paradox, a division of DC Comics, and not by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli’s adaptation of an undercapitalized small publisher) was not enough Paul Auster’s City of Glass, published by Avon as the to cover that extra time. This, according to Cruse, first in an abortive series (1994, reprinted by Picador in engendered “a personal budgetary crisis of unnerving 2004); Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby, published proportions,” as the author was forced to divert by DC’s Paradox Press (1995); or Raymond Briggs’s much-needed attention to fund-raising in the midst Ethel & Ernest, first published by Britain’s Jonathan of his “full-time drawing” (Stuck acknowledgments, Cape (1998). In addition to these, there are recent n. pag.). Cruse attacked this problem in ingenious examples from the direct market that have crossed ways: he sought foundation grants with the help of over into the book trade—all-new bookshelf volumes testimonials from fellow artists and, finally, ended up from comics specialty publishers such as Fantagraphics selling original artwork for the book in advance of its Books (for example, Jason’s The Iron Wagon, 2003), being drawn, to individual sponsors whose support Drawn and Quarterly (for example, Joe Sacco’s The enabled him to finish. Stuck Rubber Baby, a rich, com- Fixer, 2003), and Top Shelf Productions (for example, plex story—a novel in the traditional sense—required Craig Thompson’s Blankets, 2003). heroic effort both on and off the drawing board to Despite recent gains, the prospects for such books bring to press (and this from one of the largest publish- are discouraging, due to the financial constraints that ers to specialize in comics and graphic novels). weigh on both authors and publishers. On the Cruse’s novel, inevitably compared to Spiegelman’s author’s side, the amount of time required to produce Maus, was published in a climate of expectation

161 WHITHER THE GRAPHIC NOVEL? created by Maus’s success (note that Spiegelman too novels. Future criticism needs to contextualize the relied on a grant, in his case a Guggenheim Foundation graphic novel thoroughly, so as to understand more fellowship, to underwrite the completion of his pro- clearly the achievements of a Gilbert Hernandez or ject). Yet it took years for Stuck Rubber Baby to reach an Art Spiegelman. Critics should also be wary of retail shelves, years in which Cruse had to divide his importing aesthetic standards that cannot appreciate attention between actually crafting the work and seek- the varied forms that comics have explored, and will ing funds to keep the process going. The climate of continue to explore. expectation, post-Maus, was not enough to sustain a project of Stuck Rubber Baby’s scope. Obviously, these observations should not be taken as proof positive that CONCLUSION comics are unsuited for the long form. Nor should we fall into the trap of regarding every successful book- The hopeful yet at times misleading reception of the length comic, whether serial in origin or not, as simply graphic novel offers an unusually clear example of an unaccountable freak exception to some immutable, what may happen when a popular form, in all its oppressive rule. To do so would be to confuse logistical repleteness and variety, is repositioned vis-à-vis liter- hurdles with inherent formal limitations. Yet to forecast ary study. Indeed, as the foregoing discussion sug- the future prospects of long-form comics, we need to gests, importing comics into prevailing canons of be aware of the real economic and structural difficulties literary value, without regard to their special formal that obstruct the creation of cohesive graphic novels. characteristics and the specialized circumstances of Even now, despite the blooming interest in graphic their making, may mystify their origins and impover- novels among mainstream publishers, serialization ish our appreciation of the medium. After all, every remains the one economically proven means of getting satisfyingly self-contained graphic novel represents a book-length comics into print. Serialization, however, triumph over logistics and circumstance; every serial- brings with it an entirely new set of challenges— ized graphic novel represents a negotiation between indeed, a different aesthetic—which constrains, even short- and long-term aims. Not knowing this—that as it enables, the creation of longer works. is, not knowing about the serial publishing and mar- In sum, to make a fetish of the “graphic novel,” keting of comics—places one at a disadvantage when without reckoning on the serial nature of most evaluating graphic novels in terms of their novelistic comics, is to neglect the crucial economic and generic structure and formal ambitions. In a nutshell, we need contexts of this struggling literary form. Privileging to know where these works come from, and what the graphic novel package also means ignoring the conditions enable and constrain their production. We strengths of other long-form comics genres, such as also need to know what readerly habits and expecta- the comic book and the short story (to say nothing tions shape their reception. of short-form comics such as strips, which we have Such considerations threaten to throw a wrench knowingly neglected here). Granted, the graphic novel into the critical recognition of alternative comics as lit- has at last been embraced by the book market, and erature; yet that recognition is nonetheless deserved, the term, though misleading from a literary stand- indeed overdue. The richness of contemporary alter- point, is now commonplace enough that it needs no native comics warrants an expansive and searching air quotes around it. What’s more, it represents a criticism, one that not only acknowledges the artistic byroad to critical acceptance and a new maturity. Yet potentialities of comics but also turns an eye, reflex- a too-exclusive embrace of the term graphic novel ively, on the very criteria by which we ascribe value to risks eliding much of what is interesting in comics his- literary works in general. Despite—or perhaps because tory, mystifying the economic relations on which the of—the constraints of serial publication, alternative art form depends, and cheating us of an appreciation cartoonists like Gilbert Hernandez have explored long- for those great comics that do not look at all like form storytelling and dazzling variations on narrative

162 WHITHER THE GRAPHIC NOVEL? structure. Despite the cloistral limitations of comic book art, one capable of supporting ambitious, disarmingly fandom, alternative cartoonists have overstepped original and questioning work. In defiance of decades the limits of formula fiction, plunging into piercingly of stultifying convention, alternative comics have frank self-examination and powerful sociopolitical expanded the possibilities of the form, reminding us of argument. Increasingly, cartoonists are staking claim what a challenging, unpredictable, and tension-filled to comics, especially long-form comics, as a literary experience reading comics can be.

163 NOTES

1. COMIX, COMIC SHOPS, AND THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE COMICS, POST 1968

1. Notable precursors to Zap emerged from college humor magazines. Frank Stack’s The Adventures of Jesus, published in 1964 in a photocopied edition of about fifty copies, stemmed from Stack’s work with Gilbert Shelton on the Texas Ranger, the magazine for the University of Texas at Austin. Jack Jackson, a friend of Shelton and the Ranger crowd, credited Stack’s cartoons with inspiring his own comics booklet, God Nose, also produced in 1964 (Rosenkranz 16–25; Harvey, Comic Book 211). Yet these formative publications were seen by few at the time; claims for Stack and Jackson as the “firsts” reflect their later stature as much as their historical priority. Ditto for Shelton, whose mock-superhero “Wonder Wart-Hog” bowed during the same period and eventually earned a short-lived newsstand (not underground) magazine in 1967, pre-Zap (Rosenkranz 90). (Shelton went on to create the “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers,” comix hippies par excellence, who became staples of the underground press.) Another precursor was the late Joel Beck, a cartoonist for the UC Berkeley Pelican, whose booklets of the early sixties were later reissued by comix publisher The Print Mint (Estren 49, 316; Rosenkranz 20, 58–59). These proto-comix, however, were obscure, and did not exploit the comic book format the way Zap did; hence claims for their primacy are always couched in terms of “predating” Zap, a testament to Crumb’s greater impact. 2. Regarding the mid-1950s shakeup in magazine (and therefore comic book) distribution, discussion has been scarce, though Nyberg’s Seal of Approval does address the problem (125–26). The withdrawal of the once preeminent American News Company from distribution in May 1957 appears to have had a great impact; so too did the damage done to smaller distributors, e.g., Leader News, by the public backlash against comic books. See Vadeboncoeur 4–8, Irving 24–26, and contemporary news coverage of American’s cave-in (e.g., Freeman, “Selling Problem”; “American News to Sell Assets”; “Newsstand Giant”). Regarding the encroachment of television, see, e.g., Witty et al. (1963) for an essay that links the decline in comics reading to the rise of television viewing. 3. The semi-autonomous Comics Code Authority, whose seal of approval emblazoned the covers of most comic books from 1955 onwards, worked to insure publishers’ compli- ance with the rigid Code adopted by the majority of comic book publishers in late 1954. As originally adopted, the Code—a strategic concession to public criticism and congressional pressure—not only curbed the depiction of violence and sexual behavior but also forbade

164 NOTES explicit criticism of public figures and, in general, demanded Additional historical background on circulating libraries and adherence to an authoritarian ideal (in which the law is never novel-publishing can be found in Blakey, The Minerva Press, wrong and lawbreakers are never right). Targeted at such 1790–1820; Curwen, A History of Booksellers (1873, rpt. comics as the infamous horror, suspense, and satire titles from 1968), pages 421–432; and Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library trend-setting publisher E.C., the Code effectively snuffed the and the Victorian Novel—the latter two concerned especially kind of antiauthoritarian comics later celebrated by the under- with Mudie’s, the most popular and powerful of the Victorian ground. For the history and significance of the Code, see libraries. See also Watt 1999, Cross 1985, and, for a fascinating Nyberg’s Seal of Approval. For a general treatment of comics cross-media comparison, Roehl and Varian, “Circulating censorship, including the global influence of the late-1950s Libraries and Video Rental Stores.” American crisis, see Lent, ed., Pulp Demons, and Leonard 9. Lane’s success was notorious, and his impact on popular Rifas’s review of same. literacy and leisure inspired severe social criticism. In Victorian 4. Mad (in both comic book and magazine format) has been England, the phrase “Minerva Press” had a pejorative potential cited repeatedly as a major influence, both on underground rather like the phrase “Harlequin Romance” in our own time comix and on American satire in general. Mad founder/editor (Blakey 1). Like Harlequins, Minerva novels were routinely con- Harvey Kurtzman was the single figure from mainstream media demned as sensationalistic trash, yet faithfully read by many most cited by the comix and a direct inspiration for such car- middle-class readers (Cross 174). Watt, in Contesting the toonists as Crumb, Lynch, and Spiegelman. Regarding the Gothic, links the nineteenth-century condemnation of Minerva Mad/comix connection, see Groth and Fiore 24–38; Estren novels to pandemic cultural anxiety over the growth of “an 37–38; Rosenkranz 275; Bijou Funnies No. 8 (1973), an under- undisciplined reading public,” whose promiscuous consump- ground pastiche of Mad with a cover by Kurtzman himself; and tion (and production) of genre literature was implicitly linked Spiegelman’s comic-strip eulogy for Kurtzman (“Genius”). with “a destabilizing form of modernity”—and explicitly gen- 5. The Cartoonists Co-Op Press, a short-lived publishing dered as female (80–82). (The concern about popular literacy collective formed in 1973 by Bill Griffith and other Bay Area revealed here anticipates the concern raised in the 1940s and artists, circulated an advertisement in comics form (drawn by fifties by American comic books, only here it is feminine propri- Willy Murphy) that satirized the comix publishing business for ety, not childhood innocence, that is under threat.) making undergrounds “almost as stupid and disgusting as . . . 10. Fan historian Richard Kyle has been credited with coin- overground comics.” This ad depicts underground publishing as ing, circa 1964–65, both “graphic story” and “graphic novel.” an impersonal, corporate process presided over by a “Mr. Bigg,” In 1967, Bill Spicer’s fanzine Fantasy Illustrated, to which Kyle whose comix factory spews out tons of sub-par publications yet contributed, became Graphic Story Magazine, and helped cannot boast sales to match. The ad implicitly links questions legitimize these terms (see Schelly 130; Harvey, “Novel” of quality, creative ownership, and, of course, sales (Estren 104–5). George Metzger’s Beyond Time and Again (1976), 252–53). In 1973 Griffith had already inveighed against a rising which Kyle helped publish, may have been the first book- tide of retrograde comix in an editorial in the San Francisco length comic billed as a graphic novel (Rosenkranz 75; Harvey, Phoenix (“A Sour Look”). See also Rosenkranz 217–18. “Novel” 106). However, Eisner’s A Contract with God, which 6. For historical background on fandom and direct sales, bore the term “graphic novel” on its cover, was the first widely consult Sabin, Adult, chapter 5, and Schelly, The Golden Age recognized example of the genre and became the catalyst for of Comic Fandom. See Schelly in particular for accounts of key general use of the term. Eisner apparently believed that he had moments in fan history, circa 1964–65 (71–97). (Schelly’s his- coined a new term, out of desperation to market his book. tory is an invaluable fund of detail and anecdote.) For a study of fandom today, see Pustz. 7. The greatest fund of detail on the history of the market 2. AN ART OF TENSIONS: THE OTHERNESS can be found in the scattered writings of veteran dealer/ OF COMICS READING collector Robert Beerbohm, e.g., “Unstable Equilibria” (1997) and “Secret Origins” (2000). The most trenchant analyses of the 1. The cinema/comics analogy, intuitive and long-lived, can be relationship between the market and comic book content are found in many of the seminal popular studies of the art form, McAllister’s “Cultural Argument and Organizational Constraint” often as part of a brief précis of formal characteristics meant to (1990) and “Ownership Concentration” (2001). accompany an otherwise historically oriented treatment (see, 8. Though many of the celebrated novels of the eighteenth e.g., Steranko 1:3; Perry 14; Horn 56–57). Ironically, Eisner and nineteenth centuries were three-deckers aimed at the circu- himself has often been cited as the master of “cinematic” tech- lating libraries, still the libraries’ impact on literary form seems to nique in comics (see, e.g., Steranko 2:116). Eisner himself told have been neglected. I have here relied on Jacobs, “Anonymous Steranko that he came to regard comics as “film on paper” but Signatures,” and Erickson, The Economy of Literary Form. in later interviews and writings would claim theater and print as

165 NOTES his prime influences. In 1973 Eisner told John Benson that print made Love & Rockets a reality. The resultant comic book, the “has always been the most attractive [medium] to me. . . . self-published Love & Rockets No. 1, captured the attention of There’s an intimacy in reading that to me transcends motion Fantagraphics Books, who offered to publish the series profes- pictures” (“Art and Commerce” 7). For a recent theoretical sionally. The Fantagraphics L&R began in 1982, and Gilbert comparison of comics and film, see Christiansen. and Jaime Hernandez have continued their association with 2. One notable exception to this, Phyllis Hallenbeck’s 1976 Fantagraphics to the present. See Fiore, Groth, and Powers article for the Journal of Learning Disabilities (reprinted in 72–74; Cooke 37–40. Thomas 136–41), focuses on the use of comics to teach left- 2. Los Bros have acknowledged both the diversity and the to-right sequencing and visual discrimination to students with zeal of their fan following. In a collaborative Gilbert/Jaime strip learning disabilities. Tellingly, this article focuses on a popula- from 1994, hyping Love & Rockets in a distributor’s catalog tion for whom traditional remediation strategies have proved (reprinted in Hernandez Satyricon), Luba boasts of the series’ ineffective and to whom standard expectations are assumed “strong-willed independent women,” while a character drawn not to apply. Another noteworthy exception, not to be found by Jaime speaks of “minorities shown in a respectful and even in Thomas, is James W. Brown’s “Comics in the Foreign inspiring light.” In a more self-deprecating vein, the commemo- Language Classroom: Pedagogical Perspectives,” published in rative booklet Ten Years of Love & Rockets (1992) includes a strip Foreign Language Annals in 1977. Brown defines comics as “a by Jaime (also reprinted in Satyricon) that gently pokes fun at the forme mixte, a polysemiotic genre consisting of many codes,” readers’ strong responses to the book. Here Jaime’s principal and pays attention to such formal elements as layout, pictorial characters, Maggie and Hopey, mouth dialogue taken from fan characterization, and ballooning of text. Brown is invoked as a letters—e.g., “I think I have a crush on Maggie” and “I never helpful precedent in later articles by teachers (including some thought I’d ever fall in love with a comic book character.” Such reprinted in Thomas). Significantly, Brown’s work comes from responses testify, not only to a faithful readership, but to authors an international perspective, with a substantial debt to fran- who engaged that readership openly and intimately, aware that cophone semiotics; in fact the conceptual foundation of the their joint creation had become a part of readers’ lives. piece is French research from 1967 to 1976. Though Brown 3. For convenience, page citations throughout this chapter does emphasize the “transparency” and ease of the form, his generally refer not to the Love & Rockets magazine but to the essay exhibits little of the anxiety over comics that has so dis- collected, single-volume edition of Palomar (2003). The novel figured the American critical tradition. Poison River is an exception: since it is not included in the col- 3. Circa 1993–98, Cartier participated in a European collec- lected Palomar, I cite its definitive separate edition (1994). In all tive known as Stakhano, dedicated to producing wordless cases I have identified the original (magazine) publication dates comics albums for an international audience (see Beaty, of the stories. On occasion I have also named smaller Love & “Stakhano”). Regarding the international reach of mute Rockets compilations in which certain stories can be found. comics, see what is almost certainly the world’s largest anthol- Fantagraphics has published a shelf’s worth of such compila- ogy of such comics, Comix 2000, a millennial project assem- tions, some twenty to date (1985–2003), which are known col- bled in 1999 by the French comics collective L’Association lectively as The Complete Love & Rockets or (sometimes) (J.-C. Menu, ed.) This two-thousand-page anthology of pan- simply “Love & Rockets Collections.” In many cases, Los Bros tomime comics, wildly inconsistent, includes contributions from substantially revised and expanded their stories for these com- twenty-nine countries and more than three hundred creators. pilations, and it is such revised, definitive versions that are gath- 4. “Torn Together” originally appeared as the inside front ered in the single-volume Palomar. (No additional changes cover of issue No. 7 of Spiegelman and Mouly’s Raw (1985). appear to have been made for the one-volume edition.) This issue, subtitled “The Torn-Again Graphix Magazine,” had 4. During this so-called respite, Hernandez’s exploration deliberately hand-torn covers (taped inside each copy was a of high art traditions peaked in “Frida” (L&R No. 28, 1988, corner torn from the cover, though not necessarily from the reprinted in Flies on the Ceiling), a short, surreal and intensely cover of that particular copy). Subsequent reprintings of the suggestive pictorial biography of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo strip have restored the torn-off upper left corner, which Swarte drawing on Hayden Herrera’s Frida (1991). With the editorial has drawn to appear torn. guidance of Fantagraphics editor Kim Thompson (see Gaiman, Interview 95), Hernandez here achieves a stunning visual/ verbal repartee, and reveals a contextual awareness of art and 3. A BROADER CANVAS: GILBERT politics that portends the complexities of Poison River. HERNANDEZ’S HEARTBREAK SOUP 5. Nericcio points out that Hernandez “captures and deftly comments upon the dynamics of cinema,” and shows that 1. Mario’s involvement with the original series was minimal these cinematic touches inform a larger critique of U.S. cultural after issue No. 3 (1983), but it was his initial prodding that imperialism (95). Thus, Hernandez’s movie references reveal

166 NOTES an overarching interest in the way “image technologies” 4. This discussion of selfhood assumes the unified, inner self impact the culture of Palomar and of Latin America in general as a guiding concept or goal, notwithstanding poststructural- (94–95). Movies become part of, not only the technique, but ism’s realization that the “self” may be no more than the suc- also the content of Hernandez’s stories: note, for instance, that cessive guises we choose to adopt. I speak of the “inner self” Palomar’s movie theater (run by Luba) displays posters for var- not as an objective presence but as a thing desired or article of ious bygone American and European films, posters that play- faith. Indeed, it may be the very absence, or unlocatable qual- fully suggest both the range of Hernandez’s cinematic ity, of the self that makes us desire it so. For discussion of recent inspirations and the cultural relationship between Palomar and theories of self and self-imaging, see Dowd. the “outside world.” For more on Heartbreak Soup’s debt to 5. Hernandez would later reject this suicidal ending in a film, see, e.g., Fiore et al. 87–88. short, mock-heroic strip titled “Destroy All Fanboys” (Comics 6. The tables of contents for L&R No. 34 (December 1990) Journal No. 200, Dec. 1997). Though this later strip’s posturing and No. 37 (February 1992) include short blurbs designed to borders on self-parody, its blustery rejection of “self-pity” bring readers up to speed with Poison River, but, predictably, does suggest that Hernandez was attempting to resolve the they are so brief and elliptical as to be useless to the uninitiated. professional crisis that had marked his late-period work on the The story chapters themselves contain no expository captions, original Love & Rockets (see chapter 3). title pages, or other cues to catch readers up. As Hernandez says 6. Of course, Gusdorf’s “original sin” metaphor implies a on the title page of the last chapter of Human Diastrophism fallen state, as if by setting our lives forth in autobiography we (L&R No. 26, June 1988): “For any new reader of this story; are lapsing from a state of Edenic innocence. It might be forget it, it’s hopeless. . . .” Even more so with Poison River! argued—indeed, has been argued, by such critics as Gunn— that composing one’s autobiography is not a matter of falling from innocence but rather one of (re)creating oneself through 4. “I MADE THAT WHOLE THING UP!”: THE performance. Gusdorf’s metaphor assumes a prior, prelapsar- PROBLEM OF AUTHENTICITY IN ian self, internal and inviolate, while Gunn assumes no such AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS thing, preferring instead to emphasize the self’s dependence on social expression for its very existence. (Note Gunn’s insis- 1. The interaction between Pekar’s life and his art has been tence on the “worldliness” of autobiography, as opposed to made only more complex by the notoriety of Shari Springer the Edenic purity assumed by Gusdorf’s phrase.) For Gusdorf, Berman and Robert Pulcini’s film adaptation of American autobiography remains insufficient, a never-ending “struggle” Splendor (released to acclaim in 2003). The film blends fiction- for an “absolute” knowledge of self (48), whereas Gunn sees alized versions of Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner (played by autobiography as performance, not only sufficient in itself but Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis respectively) with appearances necessary for our social being. and commentary by their real-life counterparts; moreover, it combines dramatic recreation, archival footage (of Pekar’s famed appearances on the David Letterman Show) and 5. IRONY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN sequences of animation inspired by the American Splendor AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS: TWO CASE comics. See Pulcini & Berman 2003. STUDIES 2. Interestingly, Seth’s own work has undermined Pekar’s ethic of authenticity by blurring fact and fiction. His ostensibly 1. For examples of Spiegelman’s formalist experimentation, autobiographical novel It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken see Breakdowns (1977, now sadly out of print) and Read (1996), about Seth’s obsessive inquiry into the life of a bygone Yourself Raw (1987). For comprehensive analysis of this work magazine cartoonist from the 1940s, has been “outed” as a and its relationship to Maus, see Kannenberg, “Form, Function, fiction, despite the presence of such real-life supporting char- Fiction,” chapter 3. acters as Seth’s family and fellow cartoonist Chester Brown. 2. A footnote about the birth of Spiegelman’s daughter Nadja 3. Of course, not all autobiographical comics show their (b. 13 May 1987) reveals just how long it took Spiegelman to protagonists; some merely imply them through dialogue create the first few pages of “Auschwitz (Time Flies)” (2:43). and/or captioned prose. For instance, Harvey Pekar’s “Bat” Whereas Spiegelman was typically able to complete a page of (American Splendor No. 16, 1991), drawn by Joe Zabel and Maus in “less than two weeks” (Juno 12), this passage evidently Gary Dumm, is seen through the protagonist’s eyes and does took much, much longer. Indeed, as Kannenberg has pointed not reveal his complete likeness until the very end—in a dis- out, this chapter apparently encapsulates some three years turbing change of viewpoint. But my comments here pertain of work. to the majority of autobiographical comics, which are con- 3. Belief in the strictly denotative, or referential, power of cerned if not obsessed with depicting the self. photographic images persists despite widespread recognition of

167 NOTES their constructed and deeply coded nature. For more on this, Co., Doubleday) have launched but then abandoned graphic see Rugg’s discussion of such commentators as Roland Barthes novel lines. and Alan Sekula in Picturing Ourselves (12–13). Barthes dis- 2. As this book was entering final edits, I discovered, criminates between “denotative” and “connotative” aspects of bemusedly, that another book has laid claim to the title The photography; Sekula, likewise, separates the photograph’s Rise of the Graphic Novel—a cursory guidebook published by “informative” from its “affective” powers. Such faith in the NBM in 2003 (Weiner). photograph’s referentiality, as W. J. T. Mitchell has observed, 3. In Comics Journal 207 (Sept. 1998), Beaty’s “Pickle, lends photography a “mystique of automatism and natural Poot, and the Cerebus Effect” (1–2), which questions the pub- necessity” that makes it all the more difficult to approach pho- lishing practices of small publishers, is followed by Gary tos critically (Iconology 60–61). Decades of criticism notwith- Groth’s angry rejoinder, “A Publisher’s Partisan Response” standing, the technology of photography encourages the (3–4). Groth, co-publisher of The Comics Journal as well as common view of photographic images as neutral and slavishly Fantagraphics Books, emphasizes the economic necessity of referential (though one suspects that the growth in digital serializing prior to book publication, even when republication imaging technology will eventually make skeptics of us all). brings substantial alterations to the finished work (a practice decried by Beaty). In Comics Journal 212 (May 1999), Rich Kreiner follows up with “Pay-as-You-Go-Pleasures: In Defense 6. WHITHER THE GRAPHIC NOVEL? of Serialized Comics,” an essay extolling the aesthetic “attrac- tions” of the serial form as such (1–3).

1. Since the first mainstream success for graphic novels circa 1986, several American publishers (Penguin, Avon, Marlowe &

168 WORKS CITED

Note: Small-press comic books are often kept in print via successive reprintings, and the collectors’ market treats such publications as books rather than periodicals. When listing them here, therefore, I have followed the conventions for books rather than serials (though where appli- cable I have supplied the specific month of publication). Also, I have listed comics trade magazines by issue number, not only date, because of their sometimes unpredictable scheduling. I trust readers will understand that these unusual objects require an unusual approach.

Abbott, Lawrence L. “Comic Art: Characteristics and Potentialities of a Narrative Medium.” Journal of Popular Culture 19 (Spring 1986): 155–76. Adams, Sam. “Return Flight: The Second Coming of Love and Rockets.” Philadelphia City Paper, 15–22 Mar. 2001: 25–26. Adams, Timothy Dow. Light Writing & Life Writing: Photography in Autobiography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. ———. Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Alagbé, Yvan. “Etoile d’Orient.” Le Cheval sans Tête Vol. 5: Nous sommes les Maures. Ed. Yvan Alagbé and Olivier Marboeuf. Wissous, France: AMOK, May 1998. 35–41. “American News to Sell Assets.” New York Times, 18 June 1957: 53. Arnold, Andrew D. “Graphic Sketches of Latino Life.” Time, 19 Feb. 2001: 64. Asbury, Dana. “Photographing the Interior: The Self-Portrait as Introspection.” Self ϭ Portrayal. Ed. James Alinder. Carmel, Calif.: The Friends of Photography, 1978. n. pag. Avril, François, and Philipe Petit-Roulet. Soirs de Paris. Paris: Les Humanoïdes Associés, 1989. B., David. L’Ascension du Haut Mal. 6 vols. Paris: L’Association, 1996–2003. Translated by Kim Thompson as Epileptic. New York: Pantheon, 2005. Baetens, Jan, ed. The Graphic Novel. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Graphic Novel, KU Leuven, Belgium, 12–13 May 2000. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001. Barker, Martin. Comics: Ideology, Power, and the Critics. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989. ———. A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Comics Campaign. London: Pluto, 1984. Rpt., Jackson and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1992. Beaty, Bart. “AMOK’s Culture of Excellence.” The Comics Journal 209 (Dec. 1998): 19–23.

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———. “The Compelling Experimentation of Marc-Antoine Callahan, Bob, ed. The New Comics Anthology. New York: Mathieu.” The Comics Journal 196 (June 1997): 29–34. Collier Books, 1991. ———, ed. “Critical Focus: Understanding Comics.” The Carrier, David. The Aesthetics of Comics. University Park: Comics Journal 211 (Apr. 1999): 57–103. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. ———. “Fire Up the Micro-Press: Stakhano.” The Comics Cartier, Eric. Flip in Paradise. Paris: Rackham, 1990. Journal 198 (Aug. 1997): 35–38. Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & ———. “Pickle, Poot, and the Cerebus Effect.” The Comics Clay. New York: Random House, 2000. Journal 207 (Sept. 1998): 1–2. Christiansen, Hans-Christian. “Comics and Film: A Narrative ———. “The Search for Comics Exceptionalism.” In Beaty, Perspective.” In Magnussen and Christiansen, eds., Comics ed., “Critical Focus: Understanding Comics.” 67–72. & Culture 107–21. Beerbohm, Robert. “Secret Origins of the Direct Market, Part Clell, Madison. Cuckoo. Portland, Ore.: Green Door Studios, Two: Phil Seuling and the Undergrounds Emerge.” Comic 2002. Book Artist 7 (Mar. 2000): 116–125. Clowes, Daniel. Ghost World. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, ———. “The Unstable Equilibria of Unlimited Growth Systems.” 1997. In “The Comic Book Crisis.” 28–32. ———. Twentieth Century Eightball. Seattle: Fantagraphics Bell, John, ed. Canuck Comics: A Guide to Comic Books Books, 2004. Published in Canada. Montreal: Matrix Books, 1986. “The Comic Book Crisis.” Special insert in The Comics Journal Benstock, Shari. The Private Self: Theory and Practice of 199 (Oct. 1997). [32 pp.] Women’s Autobiographical Writings. Chapel Hill: University Cooke, Jon B. “A Love of Comics.” Interview with Mario of North Carolina Press, 1988. Hernandez. Comic Book Artist 15 (Nov. 2001): 34–42. Beronä, David A. “Pictures Speak in Comics without Words: “Creators’ Rights.” Special section in The Comics Journal 137 Pictorial Principles in the Work of Milt Gross, Hendrik (Sept. 1990): 65–106. Dorgathen, Eric Drooker, and Peter Kuper.” In Varnum and Cross, Nigel. The Common Writer: Life in Nineteenth- Gibbons, eds., The Language of Comics: Word and Image. Century Grub Street. Cambridge: Cambridge University 19–39. Press, 1985. Blakey, Dorothy. The Minerva Press, 1790–1820. London: Crumb, Robert. The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol. 9. Seattle: Oxford University Press, 1939. Fantagraphics Books, 1992. Boyd, Robert. “Seasonal Disorder: Spring With Drawn & ———. “The Many Faces of R. Crumb.” XYZ Comics. Quarterly.” The Comics Journal 198 (August 1997): 41–44. Milwaukee: Kitchen Sink Enterprises, June 1972. [n.pag.] Brabner, Joyce, Harvey Pekar, and Frank Stack. Our Cancer Rpt. in Complete Crumb, Vol. 9. 21–22. Year. New York and London: Four Walls, Eight Windows, ———. Zap Comix No. 0. San Francisco: Apex Novelties, 1994. 1968. Brown, Chester. Louis Riel. 10 issues. Montreal: Drawn & ———. Zap Comix No. 1. San Francisco: Apex Novelties, Quarterly Publications, 1999–2003. Rpt. in Louis Riel 1968. [book]. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2003. Cruse, Howard. Stuck Rubber Baby. New York: Paradox ———. Underwater. 11 issues. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, Press/DC Comics, 1995. 1994–97. Curwen, Henry. A History of Booksellers. 1873. Rpt., Detroit: Brown, James W. “Comics in the Foreign Language Classroom: Gale Research Company, 1968. Pedagogical Perspectives.” Foreign Language Annals 10 Daniels, Les. Comix: A History of Comic Books in America. (Feb. 1977): 18–25. New York: Outerbridge & Dienstfrey/E. P. Dutton, 1971. Brown, Joshua. “Of Mice and Memory.” Review essay on De Haven, Tom. “Comics.” New York Times Book Review, 31 Maus I by Art Spiegelman. Oral History Review 16:1 May 1998: 9ϩ. (Spring 1988): 91–109. Delany, Samuel R. “The Politics of Paraliterary Criticism.” Brown, Merle E. “The Idea of Fiction as Fictive or Fictitious.” Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts & The Politics of the Stand 15.1 (1974): 38–46. Paraliterary. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Brubaker, Ed. A Complete Lowlife. Marietta, Ga.: Top Shelf Press/ University Press of New England, 1999. 218–70. Productions, 2001. Diereck, Charles, and Pascal Lefèvre, eds. Forging a New Bruss, Elizabeth W. “Eye for I: Making and Unmaking Medium: The Comic Strip in the Nineteenth Century. Autobiography in Film.” In Olney, ed., Autobiography: Leuven, Belgium: VUB University Press, 1998. Essays Theoretical and Critical. 296–320. Doherty, Thomas. “Art Spiegelman’s Maus: Graphic Art Buhle, Paul. “The New Scholarship of Comics.” Chronicle of and the Holocaust.” American Literature 68:1 (Mar. 1996): Higher Education, 16 May 2003: B7–B9. 69–84.

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Dorfman, Ariel. The Empire’s Old Clothes: What the Lone Freeman, William M. “Selling Problem Faces Magazines.” Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our New York Times, 26 May 1957: 95. Minds. New York: Pantheon, 1983. Fresnault-Deruelle, Pierre. “Du linéare au tabulaire.” Communi- Dorfman, Ariel, and Armand Mattelart. How to Read Donald cations 24: La bande dessinée et son discours. Paris: Ed. Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic. 1975. du Seuil, 1976. 17–23. Trans. and with an updated introduction by David Kunzle. Frome, Jonathan. “Identification in Comics.” In Beaty, ed., New York: International General, 1991. “Critical Focus: Understanding Comics.” 82–86. Doucet, Julie. Lève Ta Jambe Mon Poisson Est Mort! Montreal: Gaiman, Neil. Interview with Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. Drawn & Quarterly Publications, 1993. The Comics Journal 178 (July 1993): 91–123. ———. My Most Secret Desire. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly Genette, Gerard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Publications, 1995. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Dowd, James J. “Aporias of the Self.” Alternative Identities: University Press, 1997. The Self in Literature, History, Theory. Ed. Linda Marie Gilbert, James. A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to the Brooks. New York and London: Garland, 1995. Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s. New York: Oxford Drechsler, Debbie. Daddy’s Girl. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, University Press, 1986. 1996. Gombrich, E. H. “The Mask and the Face: The Perception of Eakin, Paul John. Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Physiognomic Likeness in Life and in Art.” Art, Perception, Art of Self-Invention. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University and Reality. Ed. Maurice Mandelbaum. Baltimore and Press, 1985. London: Johns Hopkins, 1972. 1–46. Eisner, Will. “Art and Commerce: An Oral Reminiscence.” Goodrick, Susan, and Don Donahue, eds. The Apex Treasury Interview with John Benson. Panels 1 (Summer 1979): of Underground Comics. New York: Links Books, 1974. 4–21. [Recorded Dec. 1973.] Gopnik, Adam. “Comics and Catastrophe: Art Spiegelman’s ———. Comics & Sequential Art. Tamarac, Fla.: Poorhouse Maus and the History of the Cartoon.” New Republic, 22 Press, 1985. June 1987: 29–34. ———. Graphic Storytelling. Tamarac, Fla.: Poorhouse Press, Gordon, Ian. “Beyond the Funnies: Comic Books, History, 1995. and Hegemony.” American Quarterly 52.1 (Mar. 2000): ———. New York: The Big City. Princeton, Wis.: Kitchen Sink 145–50. Press, 1986. ———. “‘But Seriously, Folks . . .’: Comic Art and History.” Elder, Robert K. “A Drawn-out ‘Love’ Affair: Brothers Hernandez American Quarterly 43.2 (June 1991): 341–46. Revive Stellar Comic ‘Love & Rockets’.” Chicago Tribune, 4 ———. Comic Strips and Consumer Culture, 1890–1945. Feb. 2004: 4. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998. Erickson, Lee. The Economy of Literary Form: English Literature Goulart, Ron. “Golden Age Sweatshops.” The Comics Journal and the Industrialization of Publishing, 1800–1850. 249 (Dec. 2002): 70–81. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins, 1996. ———. Great American Comic Books. Lincolnwood, Ill.: Estren, Mark James. A History of Underground Comics. 1974. Publications International, 2001. Rev. ed. Berkeley, Calif.: Ronin Publishing, 1987. Gravett, Paul. “Euro-Comics: A Dazzling Respectability.” Print Fiedler, Leslie. “The Middle Against Both Ends.” Encounter 5.2 42:6 (Nov.-Dec. 1988): 74–87, 204–6. (Aug. 1955): 16–23. Rpt. in The Collected Essays of Leslie ———. “Hergé and the Clear Line: Part Two.” Comic Art 3 Fiedler, Volume II. New York: Stein and Day, 1971. 415–28. (Summer 2003): 70–79. Fiore, Robert, Gary Groth, and Thom Powers. “Pleased to Green, Justin. Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. 1972. Meet Them. . . .” Interview with Gilbert, Jaime and Mario Rpt. in Justin Green’s Binky Brown Sampler. San Francisco: Hernandez. The Comics Journal 126 (Jan. 1989): 60–113. Last Gasp, 1995. 9–52. Fischer, Hervé. “Ecriture phonétique et pictogrammes dans les Griest, Guinevere L. Mudie’s Circulating Library and the bandes dessinées.” Communications 9:2–3 (1984): 191–200. Victorian Novel. Bloomington and London: Indiana Fleener, Mary. Life of the Party. Introduction by Ray Zone. University Press, 1970. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 1996. Griffith, Bill. “A Sour Look at the Comix Scene.” San Francisco Fletcher, Robert P. “Visual Thinking and the Picture Story in Phoenix, 13 Apr. 1973. Rpt. in Panels 1 (Summer 1979): The History of Henry Esmond.” PMLA 113:3 (May 1998): 28–29. 379–94. Groensteen, Thierry. “Histoire de la bande dessinée muette.” Frank, Thomas. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Part 1. 9e Art [The Ninth Art] 2 (1997): 60–75. Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: ———. “Histoire de la bande dessinée muette.” Part 2. 9e Art University of Chicago Press, 1997. [The Ninth Art] 3 (1998): 92–105.

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A Suivre (series), 154 Barry, Lynda, 6 Abbott, Lawrence L., 38, 52 Bastian, M. S., 61 academic study of comics, xi, xiv, 33–35; anti-comics wave Bazin, André, 88 (1940s–50s), 33–35; interdisciplinary nature of, xi, xiv; Beat Generation, 18 politicization of, 34; shifts in, 35 Beaty, Bart, 33, 160–61, 168n Adams, Timothy Dow, 112, 124 Beck, C. C., 37 “adults-only” comics, 7 Beck, Joel, 164n Alagbé, Yvan, 61, 62–63 Beerbohm, Robert, 165n alternative comics: defined, ix–xi; as a movement, x, 20, Bell, John, 27 30–31, 111; in opposition to “mainstream” comics, 31, Benson, John, 166n 111 Beronä, David A., 40 American News Company, 164n Bijou Funnies (series), 16, 165n American Splendor (series). See Pekar, Harvey Black Eye Books, 161 Andersson, Max, 61 Bourdieu, Pierre, xiii Andromeda Publications, 26 Boyd, Robert, 160 Arcade (series), 20 Brabner, Joyce, 109, 113, 130, 161, 167n Archie comics, 72 breakdown, 41, 52, 70, 72 Asbury, Dana, 116 Briggs, Raymond, 161 Auster, Paul, 161 Brown, Chester, 110–11, 117, 153, 160, 167n autobiographical comics, x, 7, 108–51 passim, 167n; Brown, James W., 166n authenticity in, 112–31, 138, 151; as cultural critique, Brown, Joshua, 140–41 113, 130; fictive personae in, 117–24, 126; fictiveness Brown, Merle, 124 vs. fictitiousness in, 124–25; ironic authentication in, Browne, Malcolm, 85 125–28, 131, 139–51; political subtext of, 113, 129; Brubaker, Ed, 110–11 “realism” in, 109, 111, 113; self-caricature in, 114–17; Bruss, Elizabeth, 116–17 self-reflexivity in, 117–24, 130–31; series, 109–10, 112 Buhle, Paul, xi Avril, François, 40–42 canonicity in comics, xiii B., David, 139 Capital Comics, 25–26 Barks, Carl, xiii, 10–11 Cartier, Eric, 40–41, 166n

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Cartoonists Co-Op Press, 165n Delany, Samuel R., 4 Cerebus (series). See Sim, Dave Dell (publisher), 11 Chabon, Michael, 10 Dickens, Charles, 154, 159 Chaland, Yves, 60 diegetic vs. nondiegetic text, 38 Chaykin, Howard, 26 Diereck, Charles, xv Chiapetta, Joe, 110 direct market, ix, 7, 20–31; advantages to small press, 22–23, cinema/comics analogy, 33, 72, 74, 165n 30; collecting in, 24–25; compared to circulating libraries, circulating libraries, 23–25, 165n; compared to comic shops, 23–25; consumers as authors, 25; decline (post 1993), 23–25; Gothic romance in, 24–25; influence on narrative 31; defined, 20–21; direct sale of “mainstream” comics, form, 23–24; intertextuality in, 24 22; disadvantages to retailers, 23, 31; “ground-level” Cisneros, Sandra, 154–55 comics in, 26–27; growth of, 22; intertextuality in, 24; Clell, Madison, 139 retailers as publishers, 25; self-publishing in, 25, 27–28; “closure” (panel transitioning), 41–45, 70, 74 as source of alternative comics, 23, 25–26; as Clowes, Dan, 117–20, 122, 125–26, 153, 155; Ghost World, subscription system, 22; trade terms, 22–23; 155; “Just Another Day,” 117–20, 122, 125–26 underground roots of, 21 Cole, Jack, 10 direct sales. See direct market Collier, David, 130 Ditko, Steve, 72 comic book, 3–31 passim, 106; commercial decline of, 11, 21; Doherty, Thomas, 145 defined, 8; dimensions of, 9; distribution crisis, 11, 164n; Dorfman, Ariel, 100 genres, 10; “Golden Age” of, 10; origins of, 8–9; price Dorgathen, Hendrik, 40 of, 11; as product premium, 9; public perception of, Doucet, Julie, 41–43, 45, 61, 110–11 9–11; as reprint of newspaper strips, 9; as social object, Drawn and Quarterly Publications, 153, 161 4, 6–7; as solo vehicle for cartoonists, 18; vs. television, Drechsler, Debbie, 63, 153–55 11, 164n Dumm, Gary, 167n comic book culture. See fandom (comic book) comic book shops. See direct market Eakin, Paul John, 124 comic shops. See direct market Eastern Color Printing Company, 9 comic strips. See newspaper strips E.C. (Entertaining Comics), 10, 56, 165n Comics & Comix (retail chain), 21, 26 Eclipse Comics, 26 Comics Code, 11–12, 16, 35, 164n economy of comic art form, 3, 153 Comics Journal, The, 21, 23, 160–61, 168n Eichhorn, Dennis, 110 concrete poetry, 37 Eisenstein, Sergei, 88 confessionalism (literary), 7 Eisner, Will, x–xi, 9–10, 29, 33, 38, 53, 60, 72, 155, 165n counterculture (1960s), 11, 19–21, 130 Elder, Will, 57 “creator’s rights,” 16, 22 Eliot, T. S., 81 Crumb, R., 8, 11–14, 16, 18, 44–47, 61, 72, 75, 119–22, Enigma (Milligan & Fegredo), 156–58 125–26, 129, 131, 144, 151, 165n; Dirty Laundry, 126; Erickson, Lee, 3 influences on, 11; “The Many Faces of R. Crumb,” Estren, Mark James, 131 119–22, 129, 144, 151; reappropriation of the comic book, 11–12; satiric method, 11–12; Self-Loathing Comics, 126; fandom (comic book), xii, 20–22, 31; fanzines, 21–22; stereotypes in, 11–12; vis-à-vis Pop Art, 12; Zap Comix origins of, 21 (series), 8, 11–14, 16, 164n. See also Pekar, Harvey Fantagraphics Books, 153, 161, 166n, 168n Cruse, Howard, 161–62 Farber, Manny, 10 Cubism, 54–55, 81 Fegredo, Duncan. See Enigma Fiedler, Leslie, xii Dangle, Lloyd, 61 film vs. comics. See cinema/comics analogy Daniels, Les, 8 Fiore, Robert, 29 Davis, Jack, 57, 59 Fischer, Hervé, 40 DC Comics, 21–22, 29, 31, 156, 158 Fleener, Mary, 55–56, 58, 110–11, 113 DeCarlo, Dan, 72 Fletcher, Robert P., xiv “defining” comics, xv formal tensions in comics, x, 36–67 passim, 70, 74, 76, Deitch, Kim, 12, 18 95–97, 106, 126–28, 131; code vs. code (word vs.

178 INDEX

image), 36–41, 44–48, 55, 127–28, 131; experience vs. Hayes, Rory, 61 object, 36, 58, 60–65; interaction of, 44–48; sequence Heavy Metal (series), 26–27 vs. surface, 36, 48–59, 63, 74; single image vs. image-in- Hergé (Georges Remi), 60–61 series, 36, 41–48, 70, 74, 76, 95–97, 106, 126 Hernandez, Gilbert, x, 28–29, 68–107 passim, 122–26, 131, formalism in comics and comics study, x–xii 152, 159–60, 162, 166–67n; “Act of Contrition,” 89; formatting of comics. See packaging of comics art, ethical/political critique of, 81–87; Birdland (series), Fountain, Lora, 16 103, 105; breakdowns, 72, 74, 76, 87, 95–97; “Chelo’s Frank, Thomas, 130 Burden,” 104; cinematic influence on, 71–73, 88, 167n; Fresnault-Deruelle, Pierre, 48 comic book format, use of, 106; compositions, 72–74, Friedman, Susan Stanford, 115 76, 87; “Destroy All Fanboys,” 106, 167n; “Duck Feet,” Friedrich, Mike, 26 76–78; “Ecce Homo,” 74–76; Fear of Comics, 105; “funny animal” comics, 10–11, 18, 30 “Frida,” 166n; Girl Crazy, 105; graphic style, 72; Heartbreak Soup (series), x, 68–92, 99, 102–4, 106–7; Gaiman, Neil, 153, 159 “Holidays in the Sun,” 89; Human Diastrophism, 71, Geerdes, Clay, 8 78–88, 99, 102–3, 107; Humberto (character), 79–85, Gerhard, 27 104; influences on, 28, 71; Julio’s Day (series), 107; Love Giardino, Vittorio, 60 & Rockets X (book), 87, 102, 107; Luba (character), 70, Gibbons, Dave. See Watchmen 74, 76, 79–82, 88–95, 99–107; Luba (series), 105–6; Goldmann, Lucien, 4 Luba in America (book), 107; “mainstream” comic book Gombrich, E. H., 116 work, 106–7; Measles (series), 106; “My Love Book,” Gopnik, Adam, 34 104, 122–24; Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories Gordon, Ian, 9, 129–30 (book), 69, 166n; Peter Rio (character), 89–101; political Gothic Blimp Works (series), 8 content in, 91, 103; Poison River, 69, 71, 87–104, 107, Götting, Jean-Claude, 63 159–60, 166n; “The Reticent Heart,” 89; “Satyricon,” Goulart, Ron, 6, 9 104; self-reflexivity in, 78, 82–83, 99–102, 104; graphic novel, x–xi, xv, 3–6, 22, 25, 27–31, 106, 152–62, serialization of his work, 69–70, 88, 102, 106; sexism 168n; in bookstores, 5, 29–31, 152–53, 162; critical and machismo, critique of, 90, 92–93; “Sopa de Gran reception of, 153; dependence on direct market, Pena,” 74, 78, 89, 102; time, treatment of, 88–89, 92, 25, 30; origins of term, 29, 165n; problematic nature of 95–99; Tonantzin (character), 74, 76, 79–80, 85–87. See the term, 5, 153–54, 162; rise of, ix, 152–53; also Love & Rockets (series) serialization of, 5–6, 27–30, 153–62, 168n; serial vs. Hernandez, Jaime, x, 68–72, 75, 102, 104, 122, 159–60, novelistic structure in, 27–29, 106, 159–62, 168n. See 166n; Locas (series), 68, 70–71, 104; Wig Wam Bam, also serials 102. See also Love & Rockets (series) Green, Justin, 113–14, 126, 131–39, 151 Hernandez, Mario, 68, 75, 107, 166n Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, 113, 126, Herriman, George, 3, 35, 66 131–38, 151; Catholicism satirized in, 131–32, 134–37; Hogarth, Burne, 111–12 self-reflexivity in, 134–35, 138; style and technique in, Horowitz, Sara, 145, 148 138; visual metaphors in, 134–38 “hybrid” texts, xiii–xiv, 34–35 Griffith, Bill, 8, 16–17, 165n Groening, Matt, 6 Iadonisi, Rick, 150 Groensteen, Thierry, 40, 112 “identification” in comics, 116–17 Groth, Gary, 168n image as text, 36–37 “ground-level” comics. See direct market imagetexts, xiii Gulacy, Paul, 26 “independent” comics, x, 26–27 Gunn, Janet Varner, 125, 167n Iser, Wolfgang, xiii Gusdorf, George, 124, 167n Jackson, Jack, 164n Halkin, Hillel, 139–40 Jason (John Arne Sæterøy), 161 Hallenbeck, Phyllis N., 166n Jay, Paul, 113–14 Hart, Tom, 161 Harvey, Robert C., 7–9, 33, 41, 72, 139–40 Kahlo, Frida, 75, 93 Haspiel, Dean, 48–51 Kannenberg, Gene, Jr., 37–38, 159, 167n

179 INDEX

Karasik, Paul, 161 McCloud, Scott, xi, xiv, 33, 36–37, 41, 44, 52–53, 60, 70, 74, Katz, Jack, 26 116–17 Ketcham, Hank, 72 McGregor, Don, 26 Kinneir, Joan, 116 media effects research, 35 Kinney, Jay, 16 Métal Hurlant (series), 26 Kirby, Jack, xiii, 10, 26, 32, 54–56, 58, 72 Metzger, George, 165n Kitchen, Denis, 16 Meulen, Ever, 60 Klare Lijn (“Clear Line”) tradition, 60–61 Miller, Frank, 30, 153 Kominsky-Crumb, Aline, 61, 114, 117, 119, 126, 131 Milligan, Peter. See Enigma Kovinick-Hernandez, Carol, 75, 122 Mitchell, W. J. T., xiii–xiv, 37, 168n Kreiner, Rich, 168n Moodian, Patricia, 12 Kunzle, David, xv Moore, Alan. See Watchmen Kurtzman, Harvey, 10, 56–60, 72, 165n Moscoso, Victor, 8, 134 Kyle, Richard, 165n Motter, Dean, 26 Mouly, Françoise, 5, 166n Lane, William, 25, 165n Munch, Edvard, 80 Lanzmann, Claude, 145 muralismo, 83 Lasch, Christopher, 129–30 Murphy, Willy, 165n Last Gasp Eco-Funnies, 131 Lay, Carol, 6 National Association of Comics Art Educators (NACAE), xi layout of comics page, 48–52, 63 Nericcio, William Anthony, 73, 79–80, 166n leftist critique of comic books, 100 “new comics, the,” 20 Lefèvre, Pascal, xv, 5, 63 newspaper strips, 3–4, 6–9, 12 Lejeune, Philippe, 124 Nodelman, Perry, 117 Lent, John, 34, 165n Nyberg, Amy Kiste, 34, 164n Levin, Bob, 131 linear vs. tabular reading, 48, 51, 53 O’Neill, Dan, 16 London, Bobby, 18 “origin” of comics, xv long-form comics, 4–6, 18, 22–23, 69, 107, 153–55, Ott, Thomas, 63 161–62 Love & Rockets (series), x, 28–29, 68–70, 74–75, 78, 102–4, Pacific Comics, 25–26 106–7, 122–23, 159–60, 166n; cultural diversity in, 69; packaging of comics, 4, 18, 20, 31, 155–58 decline in popularity of, 102; female characters in, 69; panel bordering, 42–43 punk influence on, 69; reader response to, 69, 102, Panter, Gary, 61, 63 166n; “uncued” closure in, 70, 74; Volume 2 (relaunch) Pantheon Books, 153 of, 68, 107 pantomime comics. See wordless comics lowbrow/highbrow conflict, xii Pekar, Harvey, x, 44–47, 108–14, 117, 126, 129–30, 134, 141, Lucey, Harry, 72 153, 161, 167n; American Splendor (series), 44, 108–11, Lutes, Jason, 42–45, 60, 70 113, 126; American Splendour: Transatlantic Comics, 130; Lynch, Jay, 8, 12, 18, 165n “Bat,” 167n; criticism of, 129–30; “The Harvey Pekar Name Story,” 44–46, 126; “Hypothetical Quandary,” 45, Mad (series), 10, 12, 16, 72, 165n 47; influence of, 110–12; “A Marriage Album,” 126; manga (Japanese comics), 5, 30, 72, 116, 153–54 Our Cancer Year, 108–10, 161; Unsung Hero, 130 Marvel Comics, 11, 21–22, 27, 29, 31, 72 Perkins, Linda, 48–51 materiality of comics, 58, 60–64 Petit-Roulet, Philipe, 40–42 Mathieu, Marc-Antoine, 66 Picasso, Pablo, 55, 80–81 Matt, Joe, 110–11, 114, 117, 119, 126 pictographic language, 40–41 Mattelart, Armand, 100 Pilote (series), 154 Maus. See Spiegelman, Art Pini, Wendy and Richard, 26 Mayerick, Val, 126 Plant, Bud, 25–26 Mazzucchelli, David, 161 polyptychs, 52–53, 55 McAllister, Matthew P., 165n Pop Art, x, 11–12, 16

180 INDEX

Posada, Jose Guadalupe, 75–76 “Spain” (Manuel Rodriguez), 18 Print Mint, The, 164n Spielberg, Steven, 145 protocols (comic artists’), 71–72 Spiegelman, Art, x–xi, 5, 10, 18–19, 29–30, 43–44, 64–66, “punk” comics, 61 70, 72–73, 101, 112, 115, 139–51, 153, 158–59, Pustz, Matthew, 4 161–62, 165–67n; “drawn over two weeks while on the phone,” 43, 70 Randall, William Lowell, 115 Maus, xi, 5, 18, 30, 64–66, 72–73, 101, 139–51, 153, Raw (series), x, 5, 20, 30, 37, 43, 62, 166n 158–59, 161–62; animal metaphor in, 139–40, 145–50; Raymond, Alex, 54 criticism of, 139–40; documentary evidence in, 144–46; reading comics, xiii–xiv, 32–67 passim, 70, 116; as active fantasy in, 147–49; as father/son collaboration, 148–50; experience, 39, 43, 61, 63, 66–67; changes in attitude historiographic authority in, 141–43, 145; impact of, xi; toward, 35; as literacy aid, 35; misconstrued as “easy” ironic authentication in, 139–51; as kunstlerroman, 141; reading, 36, 66–67; reader response, xiii–xiv, 36, 41, 67, past/present relationship in, 142–44; photographs as 70, 116; vs. film spectatorship, 33; vs. reading written devices in, 145–50; as “scrapbook,” 64, 72–73; self- text, 32–34 reflexivity in, 65, 139–41, 144, 151; serialization of, 5, Renza, Louis, 128 153, 158–59; vs. photo-realism, 145–46, 150 Resnais, Alain, 145 Stack, Frank, 109, 113, 130, 161, 164n Ricci, Stefano, 63 Stanley, John, 10 Rifas, Leonard, 165n Star*Reach Productions, 26 romance comics, 12, 15–17, 68 Staub, Michael, 140 Rosen, Jonathon, 61 Steranko, Jim, 165n Rosenkranz, Patrick, 7–8, 19, 131 stereotypes in comics, 115–16 Rothberg, Michael, 148 Sturm, James, xi Rugg, Linda Haverty, 115, 126, 168n “style” vs. “technique,” 72 superhero comics, xii, 3, 10–11, 18, 21–22, 26, 28–31, 37, 68 Sabin, Roger, 10, 21 Swarte, Joost, 60–62, 166n Sacco, Joe, 111, 130, 161 Sandlin, David, 61 Tardi, Jacques, 60 Savage Pencil (pseud.), 61 taste, xiii Schelly, Bill, 165n “termite” art, 10 Schulz, Charles, 3, 72 text as image, 36–37 Seda, Dori, 114 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 154 Segar, Elzie, 35 Thomas, James L., 35 serialization (serial publication). See serials Thompson, Craig, 161 serials, 6, 27–29, 112, 153–62; episodic structure of, 154–58; Thompson, Kim, 166n interval between chapters in, 155–58; packaging of, timing in comics (serial vs. synchronic), 52–59; split panels, 155–58; reader influence on, 159 53, 55, 57–59; synchronistic panels, 53–55 Seth (Gregory Gallant), 110, 113, 167n Top Shelf Productions, 161 Seuling, Phil, 22 Töpffer, Rodolphe, 66 Severin, John, 57 Torres, Daniel, 60 Shapiro, Stephen, 114 Treasure Chest (series), 134 Shelton, Gilbert, 18, 164n short-form comics, 4–6 underground comix, ix, 4, 6–8, 10–20, 21, 26, 28, 30–31, Shuster, Joe, 37 111, 131, 134, 151, 164–65n; collaborations in, 18; as Sim, Dave, 26–29, 153, 160–61 comic books, 8, 11–12, 16, 19; in comic shops, 21; Simon, Joe, 10 decline of, 19–20; distribution of, 19; economic Skull (series), 18 dimensions of, 16; as individual expression, 16, 18; Slow Death (series), 16, 20 obscenity law and, 19; origins of, 8, 164n; paratexts in, Smith, Barry, 27 12, 16; parody in, 12; political impetus for, 18–19; as Pop Sommer, Anna, 63, 65 Art, 16; reappropriation of genre elements in, 18; satire of Sontag, Susan, 81, 87 consumerism in, 12; self-satire in, 20, 165n; as source of space/time relationship in comics, 52–53, 70–71 alternative comics, 20, 26; sporadic publication of, 16

181 INDEX underground newspapers, 7–8 whole-language pedagogy, 35 Understanding Comics. See McCloud, Scott Williamson, Skip, 8, 12 University of Florida Conference on Comics and Graphic Wimmen’s Comix (series), 12, 15–16, 20 Novels, 7 Witek, Joseph, 70, 109, 111, 113–14, 117, 129–30, 134 Upton, Colin, 110 Wolverton, Basil, 11 word distortions in comics, 34–35 Vortex Comics, 26 wordless comics, 40 Wright, Bradford, 6–7, 21 war comics, 56–58 Ware, Chris, 37–40, 66, 153; “I Guess,” 37–40 Yellow Dog (series), 8, 16 Warneford, Colin, 130 Young, Frank, 117 WaRP Graphics, 26 Young, James E., 141 Watchmen (Moore & Gibbons), 30, 153, 155–56 Young Lust (series), 16–17 Watterson, Bill, 4, 53–54, 56, 58, 66 Weirdo (series), x, 20 Zabel, Joe, 167n Wertham, Fredric, 32, 34–35, 100; critique of “picture Zap Comix (series). See Crumb, R. reading,” 34 Zone, Ray, 112–13

182